


a comma in a full stop's place

by lemon_verbena



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Alpha Cormoran Strike, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Online Dating, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Gratuitous Smut, I Am Not Kidding It's A Lot Of Smut, Omega Robin Ellacott, Shameless Smut, Texting, The Smut Continues With No End In Sight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 14:11:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17387825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_verbena/pseuds/lemon_verbena
Summary: CStrikeRun: Hello, I’m available if you’re still looking for someone to help you with your heat. I promise I’m as normal an Alpha as you’re likely to find on one of these things.Venetia84: “One of these things?” I take it you’re as big a fan as I am of these heat-matching apps.CStrikeRun: I miss the days when we all just went out to the bars and the clubs and found each other the old-fashioned way.Venetia84: I think the old-fashioned way is more like matchmaking services and maiden aunts.Venetia84: I’m glad you’re fairly normal, though. That’s reassuring to hear.•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••Find updates and ask questions at my tumblr:lemon-verbena-writes.tumblr.com•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••THIS FIC IS ON HIATUS. The author plans to finish it but cannot work on it at this time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, yes it's me again. I read another fic with this premise and was inspired, so here's the first chapter. Hopefully I'll be able to juggle both of my fics at once!
> 
> There are some subtle shout-outs to the frequent commenters on my other fic in this chapter, as a sort of thank you. You've been very kind and encouraging to me and I wanted you all to know I'm very grateful for all your comments and kudos. 
> 
> I hope you all find this fic as enjoyable as my other!

Cormoran hates these heat-matching apps. He misses the days of just going to the right clubs and standing there, soaked in pheromones, until the right Omega comes up to you and takes you home for the next three days. 

Alas he lives in the future now, and if he wants to find an Omega in heat, this is the best way to do it. So much has changed in the years he’s been with Charlotte. 

His profile is simple, bare, photos of him recent enough to show that he’s not lying about his age, a hint of stubble, his heavyset frame. No point trying to trick a girl into being with him; that’s not how their biology works. He’s an Alpha. That’s all it really takes, in the end. He does not, however, mention the leg in his profile. That comes later.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin bites her lip, hesitating on whether to hit “post” for what feels like an hour. She has never done this before, but she needs— she shakes her head, scans it over one more time, and hits “post.”

 _Nothing to be done for it now,_ she thinks. Her Heat is coming soon, and she’s not planning on doing it alone. She reaches for one of her button-up shirts, pairing it with crisp slacks. She might be near her lowest point in London, but she doesn’t have to dress like it.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

He only has one client in his docket, and he’s already got what she’s asked him for. Cormoran knows he could go into a full rut whenever he stops taking his suppressants; his body has told him in no unquestionable words that it is ready and more than willing.

He spends the morning flicking through postings, staring at the women and few men who are looking for a no-strings-attached Alpha for their next heat. He by-passes many of them simply because he can’t tell enough about them from their profile or photos; he’s been burnt by not enough information too many times to trust it.

 _Too small, too aggressive, too young—_ he flips past photos, occasionally pausing. He sends messages, sometimes, when the posting is still active, but hears nothing back. 

Elliee_Sweetiee seems high-strung by her carefully-posed photos, but she’s in his chosen age range, and she’s got _hotel-only_ and _casual-only_ both checked, so he sends a message into the void. She probably won’t reply, so he keeps scrolling, messages chillygirl1979 and Kirsty_Kitten and hollydaze3469 in turn. 

He is about to give it up for the day— he can always check back tomorrow— when a new posting pops up; it is less than ten minutes old, and the girl in the photo gives his heart a jolt.

She’s young, but not too young, reddish-gold hair, pale skinned and rosy cheeked; she is smiling off to the side of the camera, and her eyes are hidden by a pair of sunglasses— smart girl— but he thinks she must be beautiful behind them. What is a girl like this doing looking for a random Alpha online?

He scans her profile quickly— Venetia84, male-only, hotel-preferred, casual-only. She has only the one photo and her profile reveals nothing more, but he allows himself to send a message. It won’t matter. The profile was probably fake, anyway.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin leaves her phone off as she rides the Tube to her job interview, trying not to worry herself into a lather. There’s no point; she will do this interview, and the next, and the next, until she finds a job that doesn’t involve some disgusting old man thinking that just because she’s young and pretty and an Omega that he can lay hands on her.

Too many of her temp jobs had been of that sort, and she thinks the pinch-mouthed middle-aged Beta might have been sending her off to those types of jobs on purpose. She had been rude to Robin from the moment she’d glimpsed Robin’s scent glands peeking out from her shirt collar. Since then, Robin has been careful to only wear high-necked tops that obscure the most obvious indication of her designation.

Discrimination based on designation is illegal, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less prevalent or any easier to prove. Robin grits her teeth and takes deep breaths. She has enough saved up to handle the next few weeks. By then she’ll have found a position, she’s sure of it.

 _Don’t forget about your Heat_ , whispers the pesky voice in her head. _You don’t have the first idea what you’re going to do about that._

She shakes her head, focusing on the answers to job interview questions. _Oh, I’m very much a people-person…_

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran sighs. Maybe he should think about redesigning his website? Not that he knows the first goddamn thing about web design, but how hard could it be really, and he has all the time in the world…

He gives up after staring at the html for ten minutes and grabs his coat. Time for a drink. And who knows, maybe he’ll meet an Omega at the pub, the old fashioned way.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin sits on a bench in a tiny park, feeling like— like—

She’s tired, and lonely, and very, very angry with her biology. 

The interview had been fine, but she doesn’t have high hopes for it. The interviewer, a nondescript Beta man, had been distracted the whole time, and she thinks he probably already has a candidate for the position lined up. She’s just a formality, a box to check off. She didn’t even want this job, really, she just needs _something…_

And her body is stirring, because there’s an Alpha around somewhere, close enough to scent, and she’s close enough to her Heat that any Alpha sounds like a good idea. She clamps her legs together and grits her teeth, looking at her phone for something to do. 

She has an absolute deluge of messages in her heating app inbox, and it’s awful. Most of them are disgusting, _hey baby let me lick your slick_ and _if u need a big knot i got wht u need lets talk_ and a shocking number of dick pics and knot shots that she deletes one at a time. The horrible animal Omega voice in her head is taking eager notice, but none of these men meets even the barest of standards, and Robin can’t imagine meeting any of them, letting them _touch_ her—

Well. Her body is on board with the idea of any of the owners of these bulging penises and pectorals touching her. But she, Robin, the owner of this body, is not at all interested, thanks kindly.

She leaves the ones with decent spelling and grammar, of which there are… six. Three, if she’s picky about usernames containing euphemisms for sexual acts and/or body parts, which she decides to be for the first round of replies. She marks her post “fulfilled” — ha, she thinks, we’ll see about that — and re-reads the message from her top contender thus far.

`CStrikeRun: Hello, I’m available if you’re still looking for someone to help you with your heat. I promise I’m as normal an Alpha as you’re likely to find on one of these things. `

She likes the sense of humor about the situation; she clicks through to his profile. His photos aren’t overly impressive, a man in his mid-thirties with a nose that looks like it’s been broken before. He looks… she bites her lip. He looks a bit worse for wear, actually, a bit battered. His hair is a curly mess, he’s a bit soft around the midsection, and he’s got a scar on his lip. But he’s got a nice smile, she thinks, and broad shoulders, and a sense of humor. She’ll take that over photos of oily naked abdominals and offers to _fuck you all the way thru the matress baby_ any day.

She types her reply, then deletes it, then retypes it nearly the same, scans it one last time for errors, and hits “send” before she can overthink herself out of it. She’s only got a day or two to find someone, and she can’t afford to chicken out now.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Sitting alone at his table in the cheapest pub he can stand, Cormoran’s startled by his phone buzzing with a notification. He’s doubly surprised to see it’s from the heat-matching app; he’d given up on it entirely in the intervening beers.

_Venetia84 has replied to your message! :)_

He unlocks his phone to see what she’s written back.

`Venetia84: “One of these things?” I take it you’re as big a fan as I am of these apps.`

He smiles. He likes this Venetia.

`CStrikeRun: I miss the days when we all just went out to the bars and the clubs and found each other the old-fashioned way.`

He taps it out gingerly, as much for the beers as for his too-big fingers. He sends it and waits, not admitting to himself that he’s hoping she’ll message him back quickly. He’s lonely here in this pub, for reasons he’d rather not think about. 

And she does, his phone lighting up with another notification minutes later.

`Venetia84: I think the old-fashioned way is more like matchmaking services and maiden aunts.`

`Venetia84: I’m glad you’re fairly normal, though. That’s reassuring to hear.`

He snorts. He doesn’t think he’s imagining the dry tone to that message; he hopes he isn’t, hopes she’s got some wit in her pretty head. And he looks at her profile again, and she’s just as pretty as he remembers from earlier. _Don’t fuck it up, Strike,_ he tells himself.

`CStrikeRun: I pride myself on having the iron self control it takes to not send perfectly nice girls photographs of my genitals.`

He’s never done this on this app, or on any app really. Never just had a conversation, instead of a quick exchange of facts to make sure both parties were real and clean before agreeing on a time and place. He’s never flirted over messages, actually; by the time it had become a thing, he’d had Charlotte, and they had never—

 _Not the time, Strike,_ he told himself, clutching his pint glass in his fist. He looks at Venetia84’s profile again, just because he wants to; he needs to distract himself, and she’s a perfectly good way to do it.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin snorts at the message from CStrike and taps out an answer before she can think better of it.

`Venetia84: This perfectly nice girl is very appreciative of your efforts. I’m sure your genitals are fine without needing photographic evidence.`

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran can feel his eyebrows climbing as he reads Venetia’s response. _That’s the way things lie, is it_ he thinks. He’ll give it a shot.

`CStrikeRun: I would be happy to prove such to you at your convenience.`

He stares at his screen for a moment before his liquid courage gives out and he types another message, grabbing for another topic of conversation.

`CStrikeRun: Your profile says hotel preferred?`

There, that’s much safer.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Sitting on the Tube, Robin reads the messages and tries her best not to broadcast her thoughts to the other inhabitants of the car. She’s going to have her Heat in a matter of days, and it’s hard not to imagine what it might be like, to let this Alpha _prove to her_ how fine his genitals are.

 _Christ, Robin, get ahold of yourself,_ she thinks. It’s all so unfamiliar, the onset of Heat without the cushiony barrier provided by the suppressants she can no longer afford.

She ought to reply to him. His second message gives her a topic to respond to that’s far more straightforward to think about.

`Venetia84: I share a flat, and my flatmate won’t be appreciative of me having my heat there, especially with someone he’s never met.`

Then, a beat later, she quickly adds,

`Venetia84: He’s very nice, but he’s a gay Beta and he doesn’t really understand what Heat is like at all.`

There. That way he doesn’t misunderstand what things are like between Robin and her flat-mate.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

_He?_ is ringing in Strike’s ears until the second message pops up, and his hackles lower.

 _Getting possessive already, are you?_ he asks himself, wondering if he ought to cut himself off. _She’s just a girl you’ve exchanged a few messages with, not your Bond-mate. She’s probably not even the same girl in the picture._

A girl that beautiful, with a sense of humor and a firm grasp of sentence structure and punctuation? She’d be off the market before he could say snap.

`CStrikeRun: That’s fine, I understand. Let me see what I can arrange. If I can’t book a room, I have my own flat, if that’s alright?`

He waits, finishing his beer, and decides not to have another.

`Venetia84: I would prefer a hotel room, thanks though! xx`

He’s not surprised; he’s a strange Alpha she met on an app. _Honestly, I’d be less interested if she’d been fine coming to my flat with nothing more to go on than this,_ he thinks as he messages her back carefully.

`CStrikeRun: That’s smart of you. Give me a day or so to set something up?`

Her reply is instant. 

`Venetia84: You don’t have to do that, I can get a room.`

He closes out his tab before responding.

`CStrikeRun: It’s the Alpha’s job to take care of the Omega during Heat. Let me do this for you.`

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin blushes down at her phone, standing in line at the coffeeshop. She wonders what his voice sounds like; the sentence was commanding, nudging up against primal directives. _Listen to your Alpha. Let him take care of you. He’ll do whatever you need._

She’s never even met him. She has no idea what he’s like, if he’s smart, if he’s kind, if he prefers coffee or tea. But somehow, over the past hour, it’s been decided that he’s going to see her through her heat, and he wants to take care of her. It’s a bit intoxicating, really.

`Venetia84: Alright. Let me know the hotel before you pay, though, please. You understand.`

She orders her mocha and leans against the counter, waiting.

`CStrikeRun: I do. You’re a smart girl, Venetia84. I like that about you.`

_I like you too, whoever you are,_ Robin thinks to herself. _I hope that it’s not a mistake._


	2. Chapter 2

Cormoran reaches out to his network and starts pulling strings. He can’t really afford a heat hotel on his own, and he’s sure that Venetia would chip in for it— she seems the type— but she’s allowed him this, and he doesn’t want to let her down.

He’s not doing anything else with his time, anyway. So he messages a contact he has at a hotel that is NOT for heats, who has been helpful to him on a number of other occasions. The young man’s tendency for being picked up by wealthy married women means that Strike’s been in the position to help him out a time or two, and he figures he has enough cred to at least make this a starting point.

The young man is amiable to helping Strike, especially when it’s made clear that this is in pursuit of an Omega in Heat. There is little the young man understands better than the oldest and noblest of hunts. 

Some time later, Strike is messaged back with a code that’s supposedly for strictly internal use, and he’s told to input it into the discount line of any hotel in a certain chain to receive a substantial discount.

He swears to return a favor in the future, and goes on the hunt for the cheapest suitable hotel in the area to apply his code to. He messages Venetia:

`CStrikeRun: Do you have a preferred area to meet in?`

She messages him back:

`Venetia84: Wherever is fine for me, so long as there’s parking. I drive.`

She had a car in London? He assumes she’s driving herself around, and hopes she’s not like his sister, or Charlotte, half-distracted at every turn. Well, it does simplify his search, and he limits himself only by what he can get to. 

Eventually, he manages to find a room starting the day after next for not too dear a price, and applies the discount code to find that his friendship is apparently worth quite a bit, because it’s not nearly as bad as he’d been fearing.

`CStrikeRun: Is day after next good with you? I’ve got a room lined up here:`

He adds a link to the hotel, which is not too seedy, and hopes it’s all up to muster, because he’s not likely to find such a deal again.

`Venetia84: Looks good to me. Thank you for taking care of this.`

He pays, and doesn’t feel the usual pang when he sees the money disappear from his account. This is for a good cause; the best, really. This rut is promising to be a hard one, and this girl has a sense of humor and a pretty smile; god, he hopes she looks like her picture.

`CStrikeRun: You’re very welcome. I look forward to meeting you.`

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin is nervous, staring at her wardrobe the morning before her…. date? Is an appointment to be fucked through her heat in an only-slightly-shabby heat hotel a date?

Should she pack clothing? She’s unlikely to need it. She’s never done this before, never fucked a stranger, never had a proper Heat, never taken a knot…

She feels nauseous. Is that part of Heat? Nausea? _God, I hope not,_ she thinks, flinging herself across her bedspread. _I think that’s usually pregnancy, and there’s no chance of that, at least._

She’d gone on the best possible birth control after— well, after. She had known that she wasn’t going to go through her next Heat alone, and there was no reason to take a chance. So it was just nerves. 

_Chin up, Ellacott_ she thinks as she lays staring up at the ceiling, her skin itchy and hot and tight. It wouldn’t be long, now. _At least you found someone to pay for the hotel room for you._

She snorts at that. She’s not one to go searching for someone to take care of her, but it was nice, she thought, to be taken care of. That someone should _want_ to take care of her.

She throws some things in her bag, despite the uncertainty. She’s more likely to regret not having it. Some clothing, certainly for after, her toiletries, her chargers. Some makeup, on a bit of a whim; she certainly wouldn’t be wearing any during her Heat.

After a while Robin just flings her hands up and leaves her room, goes to the kitchen to make something to eat. She’s been ravenous the past few days; her body is preparing for the serious work of fucking for three days straight for the express purpose of making a baby, and that requires some preparation. She makes and eats two sandwiches, and reaches for the fruit bowl after she’s done.

It’s unfamiliar, all these feelings coursing through her, but she’ll be okay, she tells herself. Omegas have been having their Heats since forever, and if everyone else can handle it, she certainly can.

She settles down in front of the telly with a bowl of crisps and a bottle of seltzer, trying to distract herself from the insistent itch of her biology and the knowledge of what’s soon to come.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran spends the day before his… assignation? He doesn’t know what to think of it as. _It’s essentially an appointment to fuck each other senseless,_ he thinks to himself dryly.

He tries to work, but can’t; his impending rut doesn’t leave enough room in his brain for finer points of logistics or marketing, not that he’s any great shakes at self promotion on the best of days. He gives up on the office after 11 am, throws on his coat and walks off into the city. 

He’s an Alpha near his Rut, so he’s self conscious of the effect he might have on the people around him. Most Betas won’t be able to notice, but other Alphas will, and certainly Omegas will too. He stays out of the more populated areas, just walks, aimless. His body wants _food,_ craves fuel for the two-person orgy he’s about to join; the thought of sex sends a jolt through him, and he pushes it away. 

He buys a large curry from a tiny Indian shop, eats it while sitting at an unoccupied chess table in a park. He wanders more, buys a burrito from a food truck. He’s about to cross a street when he notices a used book store, and he goes in, just for something to do.

There’s a copy of a book of Russian short stories he remembers from uni; he’d taken Russian literature as sort of a lark, but he enjoyed it more than he’d expected to. The starkness of it, the harsh world contained in those pages, had spoken to him. He buys the book without thinking about it too hard. 

He keeps walking, knowing it’s bad for his leg but needing the outlet. Walking past a university, he realizes what he ought to do is go swim laps; better for his leg, and a good way to take the world’s longest hot shower. He turns back toward his flat, a goal in mind.

He is carefully not thinking about Venetia84, because he knows that way lies danger. Either he’ll get too attached, as his hormones clamor for him to do whenever he spends time with an Omega, or she will, and their conversation had been nice the day before. It would be easy, he thinks, to find more in common than he ought to. 

_Casual-only,_ her profile said. He needs to keep it casual. He wants to message her again, ask how her day is going, ask if there’s anything she needs from him. 

As he’s unstrapping himself from his prosthetic, he has a thought that sends panic down his spine. He reaches for his phone, opens up the app.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

`CStrikeRun: I just realized I forgot to tell you something that might be a dealbreaker for you.`

Robin stares at her mobile. She’s been trying to resist the urge to message him all day, and now this? Thoughts rush through her head— he’s a criminal, he’s Mated, he’s not the man in the pictures— although who would choose to use the pictures? Someone who looks worse than that— 

She’s clutching her phone tightly when the next message pings.

`CStrikeRun: I only have one leg. I lost the lower half of my left leg when I was in the military. Everything still functions, though.`

_Oh,_ Robin thinks, _that’s fine, then. That’s doable._

Well, of course it’s not _fine,_ it must be horrible for him. But at least he doesn’t have three children, or chlamydia. She stares sightlessly at her phone screen for a few minutes, mulling it over, before typing out a message back.

`Venetia84: I understand why would wouldn’t put that in your profile, but if it doesn’t make a difference to you I’m fine with it.`

She finds, as she hits “send,” that it’s the truth. People have all kinds of scars and trauma, after all. She just wears hers on the inside. She’s not going to hold his against him. _A bit unexpected, though,_ she thinks, looking at the photos of him on his profile again, now that she has the app open. 

Well, perhaps not. She had thought that he looked battered by life, hadn’t she? He was just… a bit more battered than she’d thought. She sets her phone aside with a distracted sigh.

Her skin is itching and tingling all over, and she feels like she’s running a low fever. Robin rubs her legs together uncomfortably under the blanket, seeking friction, knowing it’s going to get worse and not really knowing by how much.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran rinses off before getting into the pool, partially just to scrub the pheromones off his skin. This close to his Rut, he’s practically broadcasting his every feeling to the world, or at least he feels as though he is.

Finally she messages him back, and the shock of relief is instant. He’d been worried— it had happened before, Omegas who didn’t want to be knotted up by a damaged Alpha. He understood in the abstract— their instincts wanting the best possible father for their future children, even if no children were going to result from a Heat spent with him. But just because he understood didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

Cormoran slips into the pool, starting to swim in the unoccupied lane, and all he can think about is the next day— _what color will her eyes be?_ he wonders. _What will her voice sound like— how tall is she— what will she smell like—_

When he finishes his laps, he takes a long, cold shower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the shorter chapter and lack of updates. Some crazy stuff is going on at work and my writing time has been severely impacted. Hopefully by next week I'll be back to my more usual schedule, but I can't promise quick updates for a while. Thanks for being so understanding and supportive! This fandom has been so wonderful to join.
> 
> Next chapter: introductions, and then some ;)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait, everyone. When I posted the last chapter of _love like blood_ I had a draft of this chapter, but I ended up having to scrap 1500 words because it veered wildly away from my outline for this fic, so I've been re-writing and those of you who write know that it's the absolute worst. But here it is finally! You're all continuing to be wonderful and I so appreciate it. 
> 
> Side note: where does this fandom "hang out" online? I don't use social media much, but I enjoy being part of communities. 
> 
> Enjoy the chapter, and get excited for the next one ;)

At some point, Robin manages to fall asleep on the couch, and she is awakened in the evening by the return of her erstwhile flatmate. She gathers herself up and scurries off to her room before she has to face him, though he is kind and generally understanding.

She doesn’t have the energy to think about him right now. She can feel herself dissolving slowly into the Heat that is so inevitable; she is slowly becoming a mess of pheromones and slick and need. She lays in her bed and whimpers softly; she knows she shouldn’t touch herself, that it will only make it worse, bring on her Heat faster. 

She yanks her hands away from her too-hot skin, reaching for her phone instead. She can play a game, or scroll aimlessly through Facebook, or anything, to distract herself.

She opens the heat-matching app, stares at the messages she’s exchanged with the Alpha who will be her partner in less than 24 hours, the man who will shortly be fucking her— no, she can’t think about that. She opens his photo, full screen, examines it closely. 

She still likes what she sees. It’s harder to trust _handsome_ now, so she likes that’s he’s not; she looks instead for the kindness that might be lurking in the lines around his eyes, the confidence and experience that might come with the hint of grey at his temples and in his beard.

She’s never kissed a man who has a beard before. Matthew had never— actually, Matthew’s facial hair had never been thick enough to grow out, blonde and wispy. He’d affected a disinterest in the idea of having a beard or a moustache. But this man, this Alpha— she wonders what his name is, what C stands for— he has a respectable dark growth of hair covering his cheeks and jaw. Robin closes her eyes, wonders what it will feel like against her skin, her lips— she can feel herself becoming wet, slick beginning to slide down her thighs. 

_Shit,_ this is what she’s _not_ supposed to be doing right now. She shoves the thoughts of his facial hair away and returns to her absent question. CStrikeRun probably had a boring first name. Christopher? Connor? Cameron? ...Craig? 

She opens their messages, fingers poised to ask, then stops. Their last messages had been about his leg, or lack thereof, and then setting up the time and place they would be meeting; she doesn’t know what the etiquette is here. Does he want to get to know her before they…. do this, or is this supposed to be strictly business, strictly pleasure?

“Bollocks,” she says out loud, and rolls her eyes. What has she got to lose? He’s already agreed to— no, don’t think about that. She’s not about to scare him off now, she doesn’t think. The worst that could happen is he doesn’t say anything back, right?

`Venetia84: It seems odd to me that we’re going to be`

She stares at the screen. How is she supposed to phrase this? _Fucking for the next few days_ are the words that come to mind, but she couldn’t force her fingers to type them if she tried. She backspaces.

`Venetia84: We’re going to be spending the next few days together, and I’ve just realized don’t even know your name.`

She hits _send_ without giving herself time to overthink herself out of it, and then leaves the app. She’s nervous, excited, maybe queasy— she opens a match-three game, just to give her brain something to focus on. 

A minute later, she gets a notification. 

_CStrikeRun has replied to your message! :)_

She exhales heavily, relieved.

`CStrikeRun: I don’t know yours either, unless it’s Venetia.`

She smiles and types. Her body is full of warm rippling waves of arousal, but she’s far more focused on the flutters of excitement that she gets from messaging this man, whoever he is. She’ll know soon enough.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

``

`Venetia84: Venetia’s not my first name, no.`

`CStrikeRun: So it’s your middle name, then? I don’t think it’s a last name.`

`Venetia84: You’re right! Good guess :)`

`CStrikeRun: Not really a guess. You basically told me yourself. `

`Venetia84: I suppose I did. `

`Venetia84: Is C your first initial, or is that a joke of some kind?`

`CStrikeRun: It is my first initial.`

`Venetia84: What does it stand for?`

`CStrikeRun: You’ll never guess it. `

`Venetia84: So I take it you’re not called Christopher or Connor, then?`

`CStrikeRun: Correct`

`Venetia84: But your name does start with a C?`

`CStrikeRun: It does. Good on you for checking.`

`Venetia84: I’m a very thorough person. `

`CStrikeRun: That’s promising to hear.`

``

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran isn’t sure if he’s managing to be engaging over their text conversation, but he hopes to god that he’s not being boring, at least. He wonders if his last message was too forward— is he toeing the line between flirty and creepy? He’s never really _done_ flirty before, and it doesn’t seem like the sort of skill he’s likely to pick up at this age, but then again, he’s never chatted like this with previous partners.

Generally, the interactions on heat-matching apps were very businesslike. People looking for romantic matches went to dating apps; heat-matching apps were for people looking for a partner with the correct genitalia in the same geographic location. This doesn’t feel like that, though. This is… different. In perhaps a good way?

Cormoran isn’t one for relationships. His track record is bad, and he has no intention of trying to fix it at this point. But Venetia84 isn’t behaving like most of the other Omegas he’s met online for this purpose. 

For one thing, she has good grammar and spelling, which is a relief. And she isn’t trying to “sext” or whatever it is that people do. She’s just making small talk. After his past few Ruts spent with Omegas who seemed to want to exchange as little information as possible, treating their biological needs like a back-alley drug deal, it’s a nice change of pace.

She hasn’t replied yet. Cormoran tells himself he’s not worried about it. Really, he isn’t. Because he isn’t worried, he sends another text, once again redirecting the conversation away from his pathetic attempts to flirt.

` CStrikeRun: What are you doing right now?`

Oh Christ, that’s worse, isn’t it? 

“Ah, fuck it,” he says aloud. She’s unlikely to back out now, despite how terribly he’s doing at managing to uphold a normal conversation.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

``

`CStrikeRun: What are you doing right now?`

`Venetia84: Trying to watch netflix and failing. Trying to play bejeweled and failing. Trying to sleep and failing.`

`Venetia84: I’m not doing very well at anything, basically. `

`CStrikeRun: I’m sorry to hear that.`

`Venetia84: Distract me?`

`CStrikeRun: How?`

`Venetia84: Well, what are you doing right now?`

`CStrikeRun: I was reading a book I bought earlier. Now I’m messaging you.`

`Venetia84: That’s interesting, what’s the book?`

`CStrikeRun: It’s a collection of Russian short stories.`

`Venetia84: That’s cool! I knew a girl from Russia in my program at uni. She had a beautiful accent. `

`CStrikeRun: You went to uni?`

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin stares at her phone, fully distracted from her body’s insistent urges now. What should she say? She shouldn’t have mentioned Yana; now he knew she’d been to uni, and she never knows what to say in moments like this. She stares at her blank screen for a minute, two.

She types a reply and sends it before she has time to overthink it. This man can know her, a little. He’s going to know her— very biblically— soon enough.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

  
`Venetia84: I did, but I didn’t finish. Some things came up and I never went back.`

`CStrikeRun: I didn’t finish uni either. `

`CStrikeRun: I dropped out to join the military.`

`Venetia84: Is that how you lost your leg?`

`Venetia84: I’m sorry, that’s a terribly rude thing to ask. `

`CStrikeRun: No, it’s alright, it’s a normal thing to wonder. It is.`

`Venetia84: This has gotten heavy. Tell me more about your book?`

`CStrikeRun: Not much to say. I took some Russian in uni, recognized the book in the shop.`

`Venetia84: Is it actually in Russian, or is it translations?`

`CStrikeRun: Both, it has the english on the page across from the Russian.`

`Venetia84: So it comes with its own cheat-sheet, that’s handy.`

`CStrikeRun: Especially since it’s been at least a decade since I tried to read anything substantial in Russian. `

`Venetia84: What about insubstantial?`

`CStrikeRun: I don’t think menus count.`

`Venetia84: LOL`

`Venetia84: The only Russian food I can think of is borchst, and I think I’m spelling that wrong. `

`CStrikeRun: Borscht when prepared correctly is actually decently appetizing. `

`Venetia84: And when it’s prepared wrong?`

`CStrikeRun: Worse than dishwater.  
`

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran’s hand snuck down to palm himself absently through his sweatpants as he typed; to his own shock, he finds himself enjoying the conversation. Venetia84 is a good conversationalist, asking the right sort of questions, at least performing an interest in what he's saying.

He flips out of the chat window to look at her photo again, the delighted curl of her lip a beacon to him. He’s more than half-hard, and the itch at the base of his cock tells him that his knot is ready to pop the moment he gives it permission.

“Jesus,” he says, knowing he shouldn’t tug himself off this close to his full Rut. It’ll only hasten the inevitable. He lets go of himself, decides that what he really needs is a cold shower and some sleep. He’ll be meeting her in… he does a quick mental calculation. Less than 15 hours.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

``

`CStrikeRun: I’m going to take a shower and try to get some rest. `

`Venetia84: That’s a good idea. I’ll see you tomorrow?`

`CStrikeRun: Of course you will.`

`Venetia84: Have a good night, then :)`

`CStrikeRun: You too. Sweet dreams.`


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO sorry about the wait! I hope you can all forgive me. 
> 
> If you haven't seen it yet, come join in with the [Strike Prompt Meme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/StrikeFicExchange/profile) where you can leave prompts from anyone to fulfill, or write prompts others have left! I started it last week and there's already been two works! Don't hesitate to add your own ideas, we'd all love to have you.

Robin rises early, her body humming like a revved engine. She gathers up her things, flitting around the room, a bird in a cage; it is far too early to even consider going to the hotel yet, but she cannot lay still. She starts cleaning, allowing her natural urge to nest to carry her through dusting and sorting her laundry and re-folding several drawers of clothing. 

She should be hungry, but that’s gone now, the cocktail of hormones swirling through her suppressing the things that might distract from the pressing, all-consuming need to be knotted. 

Her phone lights up and Robin jumps to answer it. It’s a text message from her mother.

`Mum: I hope you have fun with your friends dear, let me know when you get back safely so I can stop fretting xx`

She recalls texting her mother the day before, spinning some lie about going on a trip to visit a friend’s boyfriend in an area with poor service. She hadn’t wanted to worry her family by going silent for three days, but there was no way she was going to tell her mum, “I met an Alpha on an app and I’m going to a hotel to meet him for my Heat.”

Well, of course there was no requirement that she go into that level of detail. But her mum would _know,_ and the horror of it wasn’t worth thinking about. So, the white lie.

`Robin: Of course mum, give my love to dad and Rowntree xx`

Her mum’s reply came quickly.

`Mum: No love for Martin? LOL`

It was strange sometimes to have a mum “plugged in” enough to text like this, but Robin couldn’t help laughing. 

`Robin: He knows what he’s done.`

She closes her phone and checks her bag again; she is nervous, overthinking. She wants to message CStrikeRun again— they still haven’t told each other their names, have they, all she knows is that he’s not a Christopher or a Connor, that’s hardly anything. She doesn’t message him, though, because even the thought of an Alpha sends a rush of heat to pool in the vicinity of her stomach. She knows she must smell dreadful, heavy and thick with Heat, a beacon flashing _fuck me please_ to anyone with the nose to smell it. 

“Christ,” she says aloud. “This is worse than I thought.”

She’s managed to while away a couple of hours, and at last her restlessness is becoming too much; she tugs on clothing loose enough to bear, a swingy dress and comfortable shoes. She also has the presence of mind to reach for the scent-gland covers that she hates and normally avoids, peeling off the backing of the adhesive to plaster it over and around the raised flesh nestled in the curve of her neck. 

They never fit quite right, and they itch, but she knows that going out without the dampening and neutralizing effect of covers is asking for trouble. And she needs to go, needs to go find an Alpha, needs to--

“Jesus, alright,” she tells herself, re-checking her mental list to make sure she has everything she needs. “You can handle this.”

Her flatmate is nowhere to be seen as she slips on her shoes and grabs her keys. She’s early, but she has nowhere else to be, and her skin is tight and hot, her Heat a tsunami she can do nothing but watch as it approaches.

She throws her bag into the passenger seat and starts her trusty old Land Rover, setting her phone’s navigation app to the hotel’s address. 

“Pull yourself together,” she says firmly, making eye contact with herself in the rearview mirror as she backs out of her parking spot. But of course, there is nothing she can do to combat the inevitable pull of her body’s biology.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran’s Rut is heavy and insistent, his knot more than ready to pop, on the morning he’s meant to meet Venetia84. He manages to eat some microwaved breakfast burritos, though they taste like cardboard to him now; his body has begun to suppress his needs, everything other than the desire for an Omega sublimated until after it’s passed. He tries to read his book, but can’t focus for more than a few words at a time; finally he gives up, throwing the book into his repurposed gym-bag. He grumpily hauls it along as he stumps down the stairs and off down the street.

He smokes a cigarette as he walks to catch the Tube, knowing that between his transfers it’s going to take a good while before he can get there and impatient, his body filled with urgency. The smoke he exhales helps to camouflage the spicy scent he’s exuding, the unmistakable musk of an Alpha nearing his Rut. 

He sits in the front carriage of the Tube, in the car designated for Alphas and any Betas who want to deal with them. There are only two other occupants, both obviously Alphas, and they ignore him, as he ignores them; the social dynamics between Alphas are careful things, and work best when they don’t involve interacting. 

Omegas have their own car, at the end of the train; it’s not an enforced segregation, of course, and anyone can sit where they choose. But the designated cars are meant to help people deal with the vagaries of their biology, and he knows it would be past rude to force others to bear his presence, with the state he’s currently in. 

It would be especially hard on any Omegas who might be sitting in the general cars; he can see heads turn as he makes his way through the city, Omega’s eyes widening, Alpha’s eyes narrowing at his scent. He’s just trying to get to the hotel where he will meet Venetia84, for the plain and open purpose of dealing with a necessity, nothing more. 

He wants to know what she smells like, what she feels like, what she _tastes_ like—

He opens his mobile, which has been laying in his pocket. He has all the things he needs, but curses to see he’s only got half a charge; he’s always forgetting to plug the damn thing in. 

He opens the app and sends off a message, wondering if it’s bad form to send the last message at night and the first one in the morning. Well, it’s not morning anymore; it’s nearly noon, and they’ve agreed to meet down the block from the hotel at 1:45, with check-in at 2 pm. 

`CStrikeRun: I’m on my way towards the hotel now. How are you this morning?`

He stares at his phone, not quite able to admit to himself that he’s hoping for a fast reply so that he can chat with her, distract himself from the ache in his groin with her words. He’s going to be meeting her in a matter of hours, and she’s all his brain can think about, his book laying forgotten in his bag as he thinks about her.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin’s phone pings with the message notification as she’s about to merge into a traffic circle; she keeps her eyes on the road, wanting to know what he’s saying.

Driving gives Robin an external set of problems to focus on, keeping the worst of her Heat at bay for that much longer, and she appreciates it. She loves driving, even in London, where the roads are terrifying for the uninitiated. She handles herself well, and waits for a red light to finally open the message.

He’s asked her how she is, and it’s a mark of her Heat, she thinks, that such a common question fills her with a swell of— well, it’s not affection, or if it is affection, it’s tinted by lust. Her body yearns for the attentions of an Alpha, and as insubstantial as messages may be, her brain recognizes that an Alpha is paying attention to her, and appreciates it. She taps out her reply as swiftly as possible, the light turning green just before she hits _send._

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

`Venetia84: Stuck in traffic, but otherwise doing well. How are you?`

`CStrikeRun: Stuck on the Tube.`

`CStrikeRun: Being in an enclosed space with two other Alphas isn’t great.`

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran waits for her reply, knowing that she’s driving and therefore can’t get back to him immediately but wanting to hear from her anyway. She replies when he’s getting off to make a transfer, and he snorts aloud.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

`Venetia84: Only two? You’re lucky, last time I took the Tube I was stuck with at least 6 or 7 other Omegas and it gave me a headache all day. `

`Venetia84: Also, the smell stayed on my clothing for hours. I kept thinking there was someone else in the office with me, and there wasn’t! For hours!`

`CStrikeRun: That does sound unpleasant. You must be glad to be able to drive.`

`Venetia84: It’s better, except for when it’s stop-and-go, like now.`

`CStrikeRun: Is it bad if I say I’m glad that you’re in traffic?`

`CStrikeRun: Because it means you’re talking to me right now.`

`Venetia84: No, it’s sweet.`

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin presses down on the gas pedal, her body suffused with a lightness that does nothing to dim the rush of her thrumming blood.

 _He likes talking to me,_ she thinks, navigating her way through the twisting streets. _He likes talking to me, I’ve pleased him, he’s happy with me._

It’s silly, she knows, to be so excited, but it’s just her instincts, the deep-seated need for Omegas to keep their Alphas happy. She knows that, and yet, she’s still pleased, because he’s pleased with her. 

She finds herself paradoxically hoping that the traffic clears and hoping that she can keep replying to his messages, to keep hold of the connection they’ve made.

That she’s going to a hotel to _connect_ with him is not lost on her.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

``  
CStrikeRun: I shouldn’t distract you, I’m sorry.

`Venetia84: No, it’s all right. I promise I’m only messaging you when I’m fully stopped.`

`CStrikeRun: Good. `

`CStrikeRun: I’m going to go mad sitting here.`

`Venetia84: If you lose your head, what am I supposed to do?`

`CStrikeRun: You make an excellent point. I’ll hold myself together. `

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

The second Tube ride is longer than the first, and Cormoran can feel his heart pounding throughout his whole body, his systems adjusting to the imminent Rut; his bloodflow increasing, everywhere, in a very... _inconvenient_ manner. He has no intention of mentioning it to Venetia84, though.

Well, she’ll be aware of this problem soon. 

It’s strange, how tense he feels; he’s met plenty of Omegas like this, online, and he’s rarely been so… _anxious_ isn’t quite the word. Unsettled isn’t right, either, he reflects; it’s more a disquieting, fluttery sort of thing, completely at odds with his body’s preparations. 

He wonders if she’s feeling anything like it.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

`Venetia84: I’m so impatient, I wish I could just shove all these other cars off the road and go as fast as I’m used to. `

`CStrikeRun: They don’t have traffic where you’re from?`

`Venetia84: No, nothing like London traffic. `

`CStrikeRun: Nowhere has traffic like London. We’ve elevated it to an art form. `

`Venetia84: Then it seems I’m on the roads with a load of classically-trained masters!`

`CStrikeRun: You made me laugh aloud at that. `

`Venetia84: You’re welcome :)`

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin manages the rest of her drive competently; she tries not to look at her phone when she’s in motion, no matter how much she yearns for the attention and validation that CStrikeRun’s messages provide her.

She pulls off onto the side street that should deliver her to the hotel’s parking lot at 11:37. She’s meant to meet him around the corner in just a few minutes, and she’s filled with butterflies, her thoughts swirling around and around, her body in overdrive. Her Heat is ready to burst into bloom within her; she’s sure that the moment an Alpha lays a hand on her skin, she’ll simply combust.

But they’re going to meet in public, first, to introduce themselves and confirm that neither of them has catfished the other. She’s got her Heat-safety app ready, so that she can take photos of him; she’s as ready as she’ll ever be. She parks on the street, knowing she’ll have to come back to the Land Rover to move it into the lot and get her overnight bag, and gets out, her phone directing her to their meeting point. 

Robin’s never done this before, and she’s keenly aware of it as she walks down the block, feeling as though she’s going to vibrate out of her skin. It’s a strange cocktail of emotions, with a firm base of lust, her body primed and ready to be _fucked_ , to take a knot and be filled. 

She sets that aside as best she can; the scent-gland covers are becoming more and more irritating as the glands become more sensitive, and she itches mindlessly at the edge of one. Her cunt is hot and wet, and she knows that anyone who picks up that scent will know that she’s the ripest of Omegas, ready to be plucked. But that’s not the important thing, really.

She’s about to meet a strange man, a strange _Alpha_ , and let him do all those things to her. She’s never had sex with an Alpha before, not really.

Her therapist had told her that she ought to face her fears, to take control of the things that lurked in the shadows of her mind. She’d thought that meeting a strange Alpha would be easier for her; well, a hopefully good and trustworthy Alpha, but one she’d never met before and wouldn’t have to see again after this. 

If it went horribly— and it might, she knew, was scared to admit— then the fallout would be contained. It wouldn’t leak into her interpersonal relationships, and there was no risk of anyone finding out. The idea of discussing a Heat going poorly with anyone other than her therapist made her want to vomit; if her mother called her to ask, in her lovely concerned voice, how Robin was handling the stress of fucking someone, she would absolutely _scream._

This was, ironically, safer. CStrikeRun was an unknown quantity, but he was isolated; once this was over, they could go their separate ways, and she could handle whatever the repercussions of her first Heat with an Alpha were, on her own terms, without having to deal with anyone else’s feelings on the matter. Her own were more than complicated enough, she hardly needed anyone else weighing in. 

Anyway, she thinks as she walks along, her body and instincts seem to have things well in hand, and her chosen partner seems like a good choice, all things considered. Perhaps this _won’t_ be a disaster, and wouldn’t that be a lovely change of pace?

The coffeeshop they’re meeting at is just ahead, and Robin stops. The brisk breeze is carrying the scent of the lone other figure to her, and it’s— _Holy Lord,_ Robin thinks with what’s left of her brain. It’s heavy and rich, layers of musk and spice; it’s clear that this is an Alpha who’s about to start his Rut, and it’s beyond intoxicating. 

_Is that him?_ Robin wonders, dazed.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran is staring down at his phone screen, reading over their last exchange.

`Venetia84: I should be there soon. 5 minutes maybe.`

`CStrikeRun: I just got here, I’ll get a table outside. See you soon. `

`Venetia84: Not if I see you first! :)`

_Is that flirting?_ he wonders, then decides it really doesn’t matter in the least. This is a purely biological transaction, and he needs to stop assigning their messages more weight in his mind than they actually carry—

“Hello,” a woman’s voice says, and Cormoran’s head snaps up to look at the speaker. “Are you— you must be CStrikeRun?”

She puts out her hand, a touch awkwardly, and his brain is _empty._ She’s _beautiful,_ just as much as he’d hoped she’d be, and the picture was clearly of her; he’s staring at her, wide-eyed and not saying anything for a beat too long, trying to get hold of his thoughts. 

He stands, the chair scraping back behind him, and reaches out to take her hand. 

“Yeah, uh, that’s me. You must be Venetia?”

Their palms touch, and Cormoran gets the first hit of her scent, now that he’s close enough to catch it past the wind and the scent-gland blockers she’s wearing.

“Yeah,” she says, and blinks at him, looking as overwhelmed as he feels. “My name is actually Robin.”

_Robin,_ he thinks, awash in the new and overpowering waves of hormones that his body is creating in reaction to her proximity. She smells _incredible,_ not just in the way that any Omega near their Heat smells— which is to say, intensely and almost irresistibly fuckable— but beyond that, it’s as though she’s been calibrated to appeal directly to him, a combination of sweet-musky-yeasty-sharp that has his cock straining in his pants, his knot making itself known. 

Neither of them has let go of the other’s hand yet, and they’re standing there in the weak London sunshine, just staring. 

“That’s a nice name,” he says finally, his brain circling around back to what she— _Robin_ \-- had said. “Robin.”

“Thanks,” she says faintly. “What’s— what’s yours?”

He feels foolish, but well, isn’t he? “I’m Cormoran,” he says, the texture of her skin beneath his fingertips etching itself into his brain. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Cormoran,” Robin says. “Is that like— like the giant?”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin doesn’t know where the memory came from, but he looks shocked.

“Yeah, it is,” he says, staring at her with his wide eyes. “I was— my mum was from Cornwall.”

“I took a class in uni,” she starts to say, then loses her train of thought. His hand in hers is hot, huge, and he is so large, taller, bigger than her in ways that make all her base Omega instincts absolutely purr with approval. He’s not handsome, she knew that already, but he’s not unpleasant to look at, and his voice is. Well. 

“I was going to say,” he says after a moment. “That if you’d like to change your mind. I’d understand.”

The idea of spending her Heat alone and not with this Alpha— _Cormoran, like the giant_ — is abhorrent to her; her body is very definite in what it wants, and Robin is sure her body is trying to pump out pheromones to try and reel him in, convince him to stay with her. 

“No,” she says, a bit giddy. “No, I don’t think I’d like to change my mind.”

“Good,” he replies, his voice like gravel, and it scrapes its way across Robin’s skin and makes her shiver. She’s sure they’re supposed to be talking about important things, but every cell of her body is pleading with her to let this Alpha knot her senseless immediately. 

“I should— uh. Can I take your picture?”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran nods, because he wants to give her whatever she wants, then manages to mentally slap himself into a semblance of self-control.

“Yes, of course. Right.”

He finally pulls his hand from her clasp, and he can see the way her hand flexes out towards him for a moment before she takes out her phone. This is the modern ritual, before the Rut. He fumbles for his wallet as she snaps a photo of him, then pulls out his ID so she can take a photo of that too. 

“Cormoran Strike,” she says, reading it over, and he could listen to her say his name forever. “That’s a lot of name.”

“Robin Venetia’s not too bad yourself,” he replies, just watching her save the photos. He knows that she’s sending them to someone, or saving them to an app, so that if something happens to her there’s a record of him; it’s a standard procedure amongst users of heat apps, and he doesn’t begrudge it. He knows better than most the ways in which it can all go wrong.

A wave of her scent floats past him again, and he can’t stop thinking of all the ways it can go _right,_ either, all the things he wants to do— will get to do— he could reach out and haul her to their room right this moment and his every instinct would celebrate. 

“Sorry,” she says, “I’m just— almost done, then I just need to go back to my car and get my— my bag, I need my bag…”

He knows why she’s so distracted, because it’s the same reason he’s so focused on her; they’re meeting for this one purpose, and they’re both ready to fulfill it, and doing anything other than finding a way out of their clothing is a battle. 

He’s normally more composed about this. But then, normally the Omega doesn’t _smell_ like this, heady and decadent. He wants to rip those scent-gland covers off her and bury his face in her neck forever. _Robin,_ he thinks, _Robin Robin Robin, her name is Robin_.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

The idea of _walking away_ from Cormoran is unthinkable. Robin knows that she needs to move the Land Rover and get her bag, but she can’t seem to move away from this Alpha.

He’s staring at her, his eyes flickering over her like he’s memorizing everything about her. She preens beneath his gaze; _he likes you, he approves of you, you’ve pleased your Alpha_ her instincts croon. 

“I have to—”

“Get your bag, yes,” he says. “So you’re… sure about this?”

Robin nods, and her normal, every-day brain is pleased by his checking in. She’s known Alphas who would have assumed that her scent was her assent to whatever attentions they wanted to give her, but this Alpha has given her two chances to change her mind so far, despite what she’s sure is a metric tonne of Omega come-knot-me-now pheromones. 

“Good,” he says, and she can feel the slick gathering between her thighs, her Heat coming now sure and fast in the presence of an unMated Alpha close to Rut. “I’ll go— I’ll meet you at the hotel?”

She doesn’t want to walk away from him, and she’s known him for about five minutes and they’ve barely done more than exchange names. 

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he amends. She nods, follows him as he steps around the table, a bag in his hand, and places a hand on her lower back to guide her along. It’s something she normally hates, but his hand is so hot and firm against her, she could melt into his touch.

“I wasn’t expecting…” she says as they walk, their paces matching well enough to stride along quickly. “I didn’t know it would be like this.” She knows her voice is breathy and doesn’t care. 

“It isn’t always,” he says. 

“Does that mean I’m special?” she asks inanely.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran looks at the woman walking beside him, her golden hair caught in the wind, her scent sweet and heavy on his tongue. He wants to eat her alive.

“Yes,” he says, looking away to watch where he’s putting his feet. “You’re definitely special, Robin.”

It’s never been like this before, he thinks as she matches his stride. It’s always been brisk, businesslike, enjoyable but a necessary function. No more. 

This time, this woman…. it doesn’t feel like that at all.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin unlocks the Land Rover, and Cormoran doesn’t get in.

“I’m going to go to the hotel and start the check-in,” he says, and she doesn’t want him to walk away; but a gust of sharp fresh air blows past, and he mind clears enough to see how the two of them in an enclosed space is perhaps a terrible idea right now. 

“Alright,” she says, “I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

He nods, and turns to walk away. Robin doesn’t allow herself to dwell on this, doesn't think about how her skin is prickling with heat or how damp she is between her legs, how overwhelming her Heat is becoming. She puts the Land Rover in drive and takes it down the street to park it in the hotel lot and parks it neatly. She gathers her things in this short window of clear thought: purse, overnight bag, phone, keys. She takes a deep breath, and walks to the hotel lobby door.

Cormoran is standing at the desk, talking to the clerk, and when she sees him again she is filled with a rush of warmth. He turns to see her, and he smiles, and she smiles back helplessly. 

She hadn’t known it would be like this. She hadn’t known it _could_ be. 

He finishes with the clerk and walks over to her, and she thinks he moves well for a man with one leg, his pace even and perhaps… predatory. 

“If you want to change your mind, this is your last chance,” he says to her, and it is clear from his tone, from his gaze, that he does not want her to change her mind. She is sure, though, somehow, that if she were to change her mind, he would watch her walk out the door and do nothing to stop her. 

What a heady feeling it is, to find yourself an equal partner in an exchange of power.

She says nothing, merely reaches out the hand not holding her bag to take the key-card from him. The room number is written on the paper sleeve it’s in.

“We’re on the third floor,” she says, and Robin fancies she can see his pupils dilating.

“The elevator is this way,” he replies, and once more guides her along with a hand on her waist. She goes willingingly.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

In the elevator, his hand lays still on her back; Robin can feel it, a single point of contact that radiates heat outwards through her body like a sun. She is keyed-up past the point of of no return, and she can smell Cormoran, knows that he is right there with her in every way that matters.

“You smell good,” she whispers, quiet as a secret, as the elevator lurches upward. She wonders if she’s imagining the audible sound of his swallow. 

“You— you smell good, too,” he says back, his voice low and raspy. She can smell the cigarette smoke on him, layered into his scent, and wonders if it contributes to the texture of his voice. Then his free hand is lifting off her waist to stroke at the edge of the scent-dampening patch, and she shudders.

“I wonder what it’ll be like when you take these off,” he says.

“You can take them off me yourself,” she replies, because she wants him to, wants him to remove the itchy barrier between her scent glands and his hands, his mouth—

“Fuck,” he whispers, his fingers twitching against her neck. 

Robin is heady with hormones and power. 

“You can take everything off me,” she says, wanting to give him permission, wanting to make it her choice. “As soon as you get me into the room.”

“ _Fuck,_ ” he says again, impossibly lower. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

Robin knows she is turning into a mess of slick and need, but she is in control, and she is going to be fine, and she is going to be _fucked_ by this large, strong Alpha, who is looking at her like he would do anything for her, who she met 20 minutes ago. 

She smiles at him. The elevator chimes. His hand returns to her waist, and he is dragging her along to their room.

He fumbles the door open, and she is inside, and he is right up behind her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, again, about the wait; there's been a lot going on in Real Life, beyond the madness at work, so it's been hard to find time to write. As an apology for going missing for a month, please enjoy 5500 words or so of almost pure smut. (It follows right on the heels of the last chapter, so it might be helpful to refresh yourself on what happened last; or just dive right into the smut. I'm not the boss of you.)

Cormoran is light-headed, dissolving willingly into the sweet passion of his Rut, the woman in his arms like a match setting him alight. 

Robin— her name is Robin, her name is Robin— he has rarely met an Omega who smells so _exactly_ perfect, so precisely calibrated to him. He shoves the door closed with the weight of his body, dropping his bag even as he’s reaching for Robin, Robin Robin Robin.

Her scent fills his nose, his mouth, and he reaches immediately for the edge of the scent gland cover closest to him, one edge of it already curling off from his attention. He rips it off her, and soothes her indignant sounds with his mouth against her neck, laving his tongue over the raised skin there that smells like Omega, like sex and need and paradise. And she tastes so good, in a way he hadn’t known Omegas could taste; no metallic or bitter undertones, just that sweet-musky-yeasty-sharp flavor that he could drown in. 

“Fuck,” he mumbles against her skin, as she presses back against him, limp and yielding. “You taste good.”

“That feels good,” she says, breathy, needy. “Please— I need—”

“I know,” he says, tearing one hand away from her soft skin to yank at his belt. “I know what you need, Omega, and I’m gonna give it to you, okay?”

But she is stiff, suddenly, and a sour note invades her perfect scent as she takes a step forward, away from him. 

“What, what is it,” he asks, unable to decide if he should continue wrangling his slacks off or pull her back. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

She doesn’t turn around, but raises a hand to gesture in the air. “I didn’t know— I, uh. Please don’t— don’t call me that.”

Cormoran manages to get the belt undone and shoves at his zipper. “Call you what?”

She sways, and still that sour note— _fear—_

“Omega. Don’t. I just— please.”

“Of course,” Cormoran says, immediately, grateful that it is this simple, this easy. He can do this. Her name is _Robin Robin Robin_ , he can avoid calling her by her designation, it’s so easy— “Anything you need. Anything, Robin, whatever you need, whatever you want—”

He is losing his grasp on his hormones, beginning to slip into full Alpha mode, but this he can do, because it is an Alpha’s job to take care of his Omega, and this is what will make her happy, make her stop smelling like that, and he will do anything for her—

“Come here, Robin,” he says, and it is strange to be calling someone he met on an app by their name, because most of the Omegas he’d met that way preferred the anonymity of being called by their designation. But not Robin. None of them had ever been like Robin. 

And she comes right back to him, turns to look up with her big blue-grey eyes and he is lost, lost, lost to her. “I will do whatever you need,” he says to her face, and watches as her eyes go heavy-lidded, responding to the primal urge to let him take over. And he will take such good care of her, the _best_ care of her. 

“Yes,” she says, “yes, Cormoran.”

And no one, _no one_ , has ever said his name like that, in the dreamy way that Omegas had in their Heat. It hits him bodily, his hard cock now jutting proudly out from his body, and he is yanking at the buttons on his shirt, because clothing is nothing more than a barrier now.

Robin is no longer so tense, and he can see her fidgeting, and it takes a moment for him to understand _why_.

“Robin,” he says, “take your clothes off, beautiful girl.”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin is staring at Cormoran as he undresses, feeling hazy and tense at once. The sharp clutch of fear she had felt when he had called her “Omega” is passing, but it is not until he tells her in his rough firm voice to take her clothing off that she fully re-enters the present moment.

And when she does, it is all so much— the swirl of pheromones in the air, Cormoran’s body being bared to her, the way her skin is too-hot too-tight— she is overwhelmed, and she grabs his instruction like a life preserver. She kicks off her shoes, and reaches for the hem of her loose dress, which she had chosen for how little it restricted her; even that one piece of fabric is too much, now, and she pulls it off and throws it to the ground without hesitation.

Standing before an Alpha in nothing but a soaked pair of panties and the barest lace scrap of a bralette, she is unashamed and unafraid. She had thought about this many times, before posting on the heat app. She had been nervous, had thought of a hundred ways it could go wrong. 

But now that she is here, there is nothing but the rush of Heat, the slick between her legs and the need, the overwhelming need for an Alpha. And she has one, and she has known him for a very short time but already, she thinks, she trusts him totally. 

“Please,” she says, “I need you,” and he is in motion, reaching for her, and she goes to him easily, pressing her skin against his in every way that she can. “Please, Cormoran,” she says again, “please—”

“I know,” he is saying to her, his hands _everywhere_ and she needs— she needs—

“I know, Robin, _milaya_ , I know, get on the bed, I’ll be right there,” he says, and the idea of pulling herself away from him, from the heat and solidity of his body, is unthinkable; she reaches for his cock where it presses against her stomach and his inhalation is sweet to her ears.

“Please,” she says, her hand encircling the velvety smoothness, stroking him. “I need—”

He pushes her back, a single step, his eyes a little wild. “I know, beautiful girl, but I need to— fuck, fuck, you smell so good—”

His head dips down, taking a deep inhalation of her, and she reaches up to peel off the other scent gland cover, letting it flutter forgotten to the floor. 

“Jesus, this is too much,” he says, and there’s something in his face that Robin wants to bask in, something like worshipfulness. 

“I need you,” she says again, because the ache she has for him is a full-body feeling, an emptiness that begs to be filled. 

“I know you do, _milaya_ , but I need you to let me take my leg off,” he says, and she nods without stepping away. “Go take those off and get on the bed, alright, and I’ll- I’ll be right there, I’ll come take care of you.” 

“Alright,” she says, and manages to step away despite every cell in her body wanting to be _closer_ to him. “Okay, Cormoran.”

The way he looks at her— it feels as though it should leave a mark, the way it scorches across her body.

Her cunt is dripping with slick, now, and she lets her panties drop to the floor as she goes right to the bed, a king-sized monstrosity with well-bleached sheets. She knows that the smell of her is filling the room. She aches, she _needs._

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran has one shoe off, and knows he ought to be getting on with taking off his prosthetic, but then Robin’s taking off her panties and crawling up onto the bed, presenting herself neatly, her lovely ass up in the air, and the idea that he should be doing _anything on earth_ other than getting inside her is suddenly ridiculous.

His steps on the bare floor as loud in the quiet room; he knows that she can hear him practically running to her, his Rut a rush in his veins as he grasps her hips. She sobs a breath at the contact, and he doesn’t even bother getting on the bed, just pulls her back to meet him where he stands at the foot of the bed.

“Robin,” he says, because he needs to hear her, needs to know that this is what she needs. It’s all he has to say. 

“Please, Cormoran, please, I need you—”

And he is sliding into her wet heat, and she is _so bloody fucking perfect_ he sees stars. She is collapsed down on her elbows, pressing back against him as he fucks into her, again, and he is saying words aloud to her, a stream of profanity and worship, because it has never been quite like this before. 

“So good,” he is saying between gasps as he thrusts, “so good for me, my good girl, Robin, fuck—”

She is rocking back against him, making little noises of pleasure that stroke his ego, make him impossibly harder. He leans forward and she cries out at the changed angle, and he pulls her back against his chest as he pumps into her, focused on hitting her sweet spot again and again, until she is tense and shuddering against him, until she is gasping out his name. 

“That’s it, _milaya,_ let go,” he croons into her ear, pressed tight against her. “Come for me, sweet girl, come on—”

And then, so close to the source of her scent, he cannot resist leaning his head down to lick her scent gland, scraping his teeth against it so gently, and she is gone, shaking and pulsing around him, and he follows her down, willingly, his knot swelling with the taste of her pleasure on his tongue.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin has never taken a knot before, not like this, not properly, and it is so much, it is _too much_ , it’s not going to fit— her orgasm is still rippling through her, but behind it is worry—

“Big—” she manages to say through her gasping moans. “So big—”

“Take it, _milaya_ , yes, so good—”

It is _too much_ and then it is— done, and it is perfect, the clamoring need in her brain a sudden hush as Cormoran fills every emptiness in her, fills her exactly right. She sighs, her orgasm still pulsing through her, not ending but gently extending, and this, this is the bliss that she has been promised by every story, every movie, every other Omega she’s talked to. 

“There’s nothing like a knot,” they say, and wink, and share a look of supreme contentment, and now Robin knows why, knows what they had meant. They had meant _this_ and she forgives them all for the way they had laughed and shaken their heads at her questions. There are no words for this— this pleasure, satisfaction, ease and pull and stretch. She relaxes down against the bed, Cormoran’s large body collapsed against her back, his cock still pulsing within her, filling her with his cum, and she is exactly where she needs to be.

“Fuck,” Cormoran breathes against her neck, and just the air against her gland sends a tiny shiver down her spine. “Jesus, fuck.”

“Mmm,” she agrees, unable to access words fully yet. Her mind is certainly clearer than it had been when she was aching for fulfillment, but this is just the beginning of her Heat, and she is still a messy bundle of need and instinct. 

“Bugger,” he says, in a different tone, and Robin is immediately alert. He sounds upset, and she has upset her Alpha—

“No, shh,” he says, scenting her shifting mood. “I’ve just realized I’m stuck standing up for the moment, that’s all.”

Robin settles as fast as she’d become unsettled. He’s not upset with her, she’s doing things right. She presses back against him, enjoying the way his hairy chest chafes against her skin. He wraps an arm around her stomach, keeping them close, and she sighs contentedly.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran had definitely not planned to knot Robin while he was standing, but here he is, and he can’t be too upset about it, not when it had felt this good. Robin is blissed out and purring beneath him, and he is suffused with the glow of the proud Alpha. He has done right by his Omega, has pleased her, and is now going to fill her with his seed, make her his.

His conscious mind, of course, knows that he isn’t going to mate her and have babies with her. But thousands of years of biology press against him, spinning tales about how good it would all be— 

His leg barely aches at all, numbed by the endorphins, but he focuses on it to clear his head. This isn’t about the future, it’s about the present, just two people with compatible needs, that’s all. 

Of course, it feels like the universe has shifted three inches to the left and clicked into place. But that’s just his imagination, or the hormones, or something. It didn’t _mean_ anything. They’re just… two extremely compatible people, having some good Heat sex.

His cock twitches again, and he can feel Robin’s cunt rippling and squeezing him, wringing every last drop of cum from him, and it’s heady, so far past “good” that he could have laughed.

He realizes that he’s clutching Robin against him, getting her sweaty from the combined heat of their skin pressing together. “Sorry,” he says, loosening his grip, but she twists a little, shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “I like it.”

Jesus, she really is perfect. He’s had a tendency to either hold on too tight or not at all, and most of the Omegas he’s done the horizontal tango with hadn’t minded how he kept his distance. Charlotte had hated and loved his grasp by turns, begging him not to push her away while fighting against him ta every step. But Robin just slips her arm atop his, lacing their fingers together against her side.

“I don’t want to move,” he says to her skin, dewy with sweat. 

“Then don’t,” she replies, soft and sweet.

“I’m going to have to,” he says, “because my leg can’t do this forever.”

She sighs, wriggles against him in a way that reminds him that he’s going to fuck her again— and again, and again, and _again_ — 

“Can your leg do it at least once more like this?” she asks, and from the way he’s getting hard inside her, despite his knot staying quite swollen, that he knows the answer right away.

“Yeah,” he says, scraping his beard across her neck to make her shudder again, because he likes the way she feels against him. “I could do this again.”

“Mmm,” she hums, her fingers tightening between his. “Good.”

He takes a deep inhalation of her satisfied scent, letting it dance across his tongue. Christ.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin luxuriates in the glow of being properly fucked and knotted, her Heat held in abatement by the nudge of Cormoran’s knot inside her. She doesn’t know what the refraction time is during Heat; some people claimed that knots could last for hours, others said they fucked and knotted and fucked again three times an hour. She had always figured that it must vary based on Alpha, or compatibility, or a hundred other variables. She had wondered, but it had been academic, detached from personal experience.

Now, though, she wonders how long it will be until they begin. Will they lay like this for an hour? She is bundled up, her knees awkward beneath her; her pose had been instinctual, presenting herself to her Alpha, but with him standing off the bed, they can’t really curl up properly, and she is going to get a cramp.

On the other hand, the angle he had hit within her— just the memory of it sends a wave of hot pleasure through her.

“You had better get on the bed, next time,” she mumbles, and Cormoran’s head shifts against her, trying to hear better.

“What?” he asks, sounding as hazy and happy as she feels, and she’s pleased to have brought him to such a state.

“Get on the bed,” she enunciates as best she can. “So it’s easier, after.”

He nods, his free hand coming up to brush at her loose hair. “You’re right,” he says, his fingers tangling a lock around and around. “I will.”

She doesn’t want to break the moment, but as her orgasm begins to fade, she’s becoming aware of her leg starting to fall asleep from being tucked up at the angle she’s stuck in. She gathers herself to find a way to ask him _when_ exactly they will be able to move again, because as lovely as it all feels it’s not quite right, and as she shifts he slips out of her, just a bit.

“Oh,” Cormoran says, halfway to a groan. “Hope you’re ready, _milaya_.” He moves, sliding out of her further before thrusting a little, experimentally. The feeling of his thick cock moving inside of her drives every other thought right back out of her head.

“Yes,” she gasps, “yes, I’m ready— please—”

His arm across her stomach pulls her further upright as he drags out and slams back in, and she’s more than ready, she’s _needy_ — it shocks her, how quickly she becomes lost to her Heat, even as she can’t think about anything but the feeling of his cock inside her— 

“Good girl,” he says, dragging his tongue across her shoulder, his hands rough and strong as they grasp her. “Good girl, so perfect for me, yes, just like that—”

Robin gives herself over to the way Cormoran makes her feel, lost in the fog of pheromones, the thrust and the give. She leans back against him and takes it, takes everything he will give her, and gathers it into herself, and never wants to give it back.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

The standing position he’s been trapped in, uncomfortable as it had been when he was hunched over Robin waiting for his knot to go down, is _incredible_ to fuck her from. The way it opens her to him, allowing him to go deeper; the tilt of her back, speaking to him on a deeper evolutionary level than anything else; it is everything he needs in that moment.

“Yes,” Robin is panting beneath him, collapsed back down to press her face against the bed as he drives into her slick-soaked pussy. “Yes, yes, yes—”

He leans forward to palm one of her lovely, neglected breasts, tweaking a nipple between his fingers gently, testing the waters. The way her back arches tells him what he needs to know, and he continues to gently squeeze as he fucks forward into her. 

His prothestis is beginning to ache in earnest from his use of it, more punishing than usual, but he can’t spare any of his mind for it, his focus entirely devoted to the way that Robin’s cunt is pulsing around him, the way her voice is hitching on his name.

“Please— Cormoran, _please— yes—_ ”

What could possibly matter when compared to the way Robin’s hand reaches back over her shoulder to dig into his hair, nails raking his scalp, eliciting a hiss and a particularly sharp thrust? What could compare to the feel of her skin, so soft where he’s clutching her hip?

“Yes, Robin, come on— fuck, you feel so good— so good for me, _milaya,_ sweet girl—” 

Robin’s moans begin to rise in pitch and volume, and he can feel her approaching her peak in the way her entire body tenses beneath his. His knot is about three seconds from popping fully into the soft give of her pussy when she yanks his hair.

“On the— the bed, get on the bed—”

“Shit—” Moments from her orgasm, and she remembers about his _leg?_ “Move forward, _milaya,_ go on,” he says, trying his damnedest to stay inside of her as they shift him onto the bed, his body crying out from the loss of even a centimeter of her. 

Robin crawls forward, giving him space, whimpering as he slips fully out of her. He gets atop the bed faster than he would have thought possible, and grabs her hips to push back into the sweet heat of her not seconds later. The angle is subtly different, his leverage different from being on his knees, and it’s just as good— _better—_

“Yes,” she whimpers, “oh, god, yes, please, Cormoran— like that—”

“You like that?” he asks, as though she has not just told him so. “Like this, Robin, you like this?”

“God,” she says again, “ _please,_ ” and he will give her anything she wants if she’ll just keep making those noises beneath him.

“I got you, Robin, _milaya,_ sweetheart, come on,” he says from between clenched teeth, keeping his rhythm even and hard, and he is going to knot her _right fucking now_ , and he wants to make it better than good— 

“Cormoran,” she gasps, her voice gone high and thin, and it pushes him over the edge, the way his name sounds in her mouth. His knot is huge and insistent, and the snug cradle of her cunt around his cock as it pulses and fills her with his seed is making him lightheaded. 

She is tense and trembling, and he realizes that she hasn’t come yet, and it’s a crime, it can’t be allowed to stand— he leans forward, reaching to where he has stretched her out, and fumbles for her clit. He is kneeling over her, pressing down against her, and he can feel it as tips her over the edge, feels the way she goes limp and loose, the way she gasps like music to his ears.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin has always been under the impression that the mere fact of a knot would cause an orgasm, so it was a shock when the sweet stretch of Cormoran’s knot came and she didn’t. His hand at her clit, though, as graceless as it may be, does the trick, and she is swept away by pleasure again, every muscle relaxing as the endorphins rush through her.

Cormoran is once more laying down against her back, and she shifts a little against him, enjoying the feeling of his body wrapping around hers protectively, feeling safe and secure, her Alpha taking care of her. 

“Sorry,” Cormoran says this time, and she can’t even process the idea that there would be anything to apologize for, right now as the waves of orgasm are rippling through her, as his cock is still twitching inside her. 

“For what?” she asks.

“Not,” he says between panting breaths, “not making sure you finished first.”

Robin finds this somehow very funny, and can’t stop herself from giggling.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran has enjoyed many responses to his performance in bed, but laughter is not one of them.

“What’s funny?” he asks, hoping she can’t smell the thread of hurt running through him.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Robin replies, apologizing in turn. “I’m not— I’m not laughing at you, I promise, you were very— just, so good, I swear—”

“You’re laughing,” he points out, burying his face in the sweaty skin of her shoulder. Her scent is redolent of pleasure and contentment and security and sex, and he focuses on it. She wouldn’t smell like this if she wasn’t enjoying herself.

“You apologized— for that— it’s just—” she says, her giggles subsiding now. They had an edge of hysteria, as though her body was releasing energy through her laughter. “It was so _good,_ and you’re saying _sorry_ , it’s just too ridiculous, you have nothing to apologize for.”

_Oh._

“That good?” he asks, rubbing his beard against her shoulder, feeling her twist against him, her breath still unsteady. “Really?”

“Are you telling me that you don’t feel it too?” she asks, almost uncertainly. “Is it just always like this?”

“Christ, no,” he says, barely pausing. “If it were always like this, no one would ever get out of bed again.”

Robin giggles again, softer, relaxing beneath him. He pulls her backward, more upright, and his knot jostles inside of her. She hisses, and he stops moving at once. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Just trying to let us lie down.”

“That sounds lovely,” she says, and pliantly allows him to guide her body until they are curled into a neat curve on their sides, Cormoran still knotted securely in her perfect cunt. She lays her head on the pillow and makes a noise like a purr, utterly content. 

“I know we’re going to be doing this a lot,” she says, her vowels melting a little in a way he can’t quite place. “But can I just say now that I’m very glad you messaged me?”

Cormoran wraps his hand against the gentle curve of her stomach, pressing down just enough to keep her snug against him. “Me too, Robin,” he says, drowsy and pleased. Her hair is brushing against his face, and it smells like her; the whole room is becoming saturated with their scents, combining into something greater than the sum of its parts. It’s sex and Heat and Rut, but it’s more than that to Cormoran, it’s _them,_ together, and his instincts are soothed by it.

His knot shows no sign of going down, and Cormoran is happy to lay there, his brain for once quiet. His incessant mind is no match for the thousands of years of biology telling him to be calm and quiet and still, to focus on his Omega, and it’s not hard to oblige.

“It’s cold,” Robin says, surprising him.

“What?” he asks, unable to think of what she could mean.

“Your.... leg,” she says. “I don’t mind. I just noticed.”

Once he’s been reminded that he’s still wearing his prosthetic, Cormoran realizes how uncomfortable it is. The urge to take it off at once it strong, but he can’t move in the ways he needs to while he’s knotted. He huffs.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robins doesn’t know what possessed her to say what she’d said, but now Cormoran is tensed against her in a way she doesn’t like and she needs to fix it, she needs to please her Alpha.

“It’s not bad,” she says. “I don’t mind it, it’s not a big deal.”

He leans his face into the nape of her neck, breathing her in. She curls her back against him, offering the comfort of her touch as much as she can. 

“It’s not the most comfortable thing,” he mutters. “I just don’t think I can manage to take it off right now.”

To bend far enough to reach the straps encasing his leg would be awkward at best, but Robin thinks she can manage it without making things too uncomfortable. 

“I might be able to help?” she offers, unsure of how he will react. She’s been enjoying the way they’re spooned together, but now wishes she could see his face. 

“Maybe,” Cormoran allows. “Probably easier to just get the thing off when my knot goes down.”

Robin can’t help her pout at the idea of Cormoran being away from her, outside of her, for any length of time. But she knows that this is most likely the easiest path for them to take. 

“As long as you do it fast,” she says. 

“Don’t worry, _milaya_ , I won’t leave you waiting,” he says, his voice rough in her ear. He presses an open-mouthed kiss to the top of her shoulder, next to her scent gland, and Robin shivers. She’s been wondering what that means, but she can’t focus enough to verbalize her question when he’s got his mouth on her like that.

Cormoran hasn’t stopped speaking; Robin didn’t realize how much she likes being talked in bed until now. Matthew had been mostly quiet— 

She can’t think about Matthew as Cormoran rubs his beard against her scent gland and tells her she’s so beautiful, so perfect. She can’t think about anything at all beyond how _good_ she feels, how safe, how perfectly filled.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran knows that his window of opportunity for taking his prosthetic off is going to pass him by as he softens just enough to move again, but when presented with the long smooth expanse of skin at Robin’s neck and shoulder, he doesn’t care.

“You’re so good, _milaya_ , my good girl, you taste so good,” he tells her as he licks his way down her neck, careful to not pay too much attention to her over-sensitive scent gland. She smells incredible, still, no hint of unhappiness or fear or discomfort, just a sated Omega ready for more. And he’s going to give her more, going to give her anything she wants.

She sighs, wordless, then: “Cormoran.”

“Yes?” He sucks on her shoulder, just a little, leaving a mark that will fade in a day or so. No one will see it but him.

“Oh… I, uh. Your leg…”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says as his hand snakes around to cup one of her breasts, sensitive enough to cause her cunt to flutter around him as he rolls her nipples between his fingers. “I’ll do it next time.”

“But I—oh!” Cormoran is pleased by the way he is able to distract her, and shifts his hips again. 

“Don’t worry, Robin, it’s fine,” he says from the curve of her shoulder, starting to rock into her more steadily, his cock hardening as he moves in her silky heat. “It’s fine, I don’t care.”

“I care,” she says, the words almost lost to her moan as he changes his angle to slide in deeper. “I care.”

Cormoran’s heart aches at that. When was the last time anyone told him that they care about him in such clear words?

“Alright,” he says, stopping himself mainly through sheer force of will and sliding out of her. His cock is hard and nearly purple from the amount of blood rushing through it, his knot still half-swollen and ready to pop; he wants to get back inside of her _immediately_. “I’ll do it right now.”

“Cormoran!” Robin’s voice is somewhere between plaintive and pleased. 

His hands are clumsy with the straps, and he rolls away from Robin to wrestle the damned thing off. 

“Hurry up,” Robin says, twisting around to face him. “Hurry _up,_ Cormoran, please.”

The familiar motions are less familiar in this setting: horizontal on a bed, a beautiful Omega next to him, begging for him. He yanks roughly at the final buckle, and shoves the piece of metal away from him as soon as it is loose. “Come here,” he says, reaching for Robin right away, and she comes to him easily.

He drags one of her legs over his hip, bringing her to straddle above him, and she reaches for his cock without hesitation, guiding him right back into her pussy with a sigh of relief. 

It’s a bit harder to maneuver without the prosthetic to brace against, but the lack of chafing is worth it, and Cormoran doesn’t need two legs to bring anyone to orgasm. Robin rocks down onto him, back and forth, and it’s a new angle that takes him just the little bit deeper.

“Fuck,” she swears, and he loves the way that sounds on her lips too. “Fuck, Cormoran— oh god—” 

It’s perfect, and he’s going to finish embarrassingly fast even for an Alpha in Rut at this pace. Cormoran reaches for her clit, not planning to leave Robin behind even one more time. 

“That’s it, Robin,” he encourages her through gritted teeth; the way she’s rocking against him, grinding down onto his hand and his cock, is nearly too much, and he can see a flush building across her chest and up her neck. She’s nearly sobbing with the pleasure of it, and he wants her to have it, wants her to have everything. 

“Come on, _milaya,_ cum for me, that’s it,” he says, rubbing at her clit, and her hips snap once more against his before she collapses trembling down onto his chest, his name tangled on her lips. He takes this as permission, and gives himself over to the pleasure dammed up inside him, his knot full moments later. 

Cormoran can only focus on breathing as his body shakes with the force of his orgasm. Robin is laying across him, and from the way she is trembling, the way he can feel her pussy still fluttering, milking him for all he’s worth, he knows that her orgasm was just as strong. 

_Christ,_ he thinks to himself. _That was just round three._

Heats last two to three days; they have many, many more rounds to go. If it’s all going to be this good, Cormoran thinks as he frees a hand to stroke Robin’s back lightly, he may not make it out of this hotel room alive.


	6. Chapter 6

Robin lays on Cormoran’s chest, utterly out of breath, his knot stretching her perfectly. Her Heat has only just barely begun, and in the short time she and Cormoran have been in this hotel room she has already had the top three orgasms of her life, easily. 

She likes being on top of him, she discovers immediately, because she can _see_ him, and despite their constant conversations of the past few days she still has so much she wants to ask him. She wants to know _everything_ about him, wants to dig her teeth into him and keep him forever.

That impulse is a common one in unMated Omegas, she knows; but it doesn’t make the feeling go away to know that it’s not just her who’s ever felt that way. She still feels it right now. She has his body, his hands and cock and knot, but she wants _him,_ wants to know all the things that make up Cormoran. 

She liked him quite a bit before he ever fucked her, and she doesn’t want to lose sight of that. Secretly, deep inside, she wants this to be about more than just two people who compatible biological needs and schedules. She wants it to mean something. 

“What are you thinking about?” she asks after they’ve both caught their breath a bit. The aftershocks of pleasure are keeping her relaxed and comfortable, and she wants to know. 

“You,” Cormoran says without hesitating. 

“What about me?” Robin asks, hoping it comes out as more flirty than needy. 

He pauses for a half a second, before saying, “Honest answer?”

“Yes, please,” Robin says. “Whatever it is, I won’t be mad.”

“Your pussy is incredible,” he says, not looking at her. Robin is startled into laughter.

“Thank you, I think,” she replies, knowing that she is blushing. She is unused to hearing her body referred to in such coarse language, but it’s not.... as unpleasant as she would have thought. Perhaps it’s that it’s a genuine compliment, and not a stranger yelling out a car window. 

“Sorry,” he says. “You asked.”

“I did,” Robin says, “and I told you to be honest.”

“And so I was,” Cormoran replies. “I can be less honest, if you’d prefer.”

“No, I like honesty,” Robin says. “I always prefer honesty.”

“I can do that,” Cormoran says, brushing away at Robin’s hair so that he can see her face better. She tilts her face to look at him without picking herself up from his shoulder. 

“Now what are you thinking about?” she whispers, watching him watch her. 

“You,” he says again. She smiles, raises her eyebrows.

“I like that you like honesty,” he says. “I’m good at lying, but I don’t like it.”

Robin mulls that over for a moment, the factual way he’s told her that he’s good at dishonesty. Not the sort of thing a man who intends to lie to you would reveal, she thinks.

“Well, I’d prefer a harsh truth to a soft lie any day,” she says, and the way his mouth quirks at that fills her with a glowing sense of— satisfaction, maybe? She’s pleased him, and it makes her happy.

Cormoran’s hands shift to rest on her hips, a gentle but possessive sort of gesture. Robin rocks against him, just a bit, enjoying the way it makes his knot pull and stretch against her. He makes a rumbling sort of noise beneath her cheek.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran had had no intention of telling Robin that her pussy was incredible, at least not when they weren’t actively fucking, but she’d asked for honesty and gotten it. He certainly hadn’t been expecting her to say “thank you.”

He thinks, laying there with her weight soft and heavy atop him, that she might be the sort of woman you spend more than three sweaty days in a hotel room with. But of course, that’s not their deal. Casual-only, her profile had said.

He can do casual. He’s _good_ at casual. 

Robin moves against him, and it’s just a tiny thing but it feels good, and he makes a sound of encouragement. It seems like they’ll be doing many short rounds, not a few long ones, and as exhausting as the prospect might have been, Cormoran can’t feel anything but pleasure at the idea of fucking this gorgeous creature over and over— and over and over—

His knot has just begun to abate, and they have barely been in the room for four hours. He plants a gentle kiss to the first bit of her skin that presents itself— her shoulder. 

“Want to go again, or do you want a break?” he asks, his voice gone fathoms deep in his chest. He knows what he wants to do, which is thrust his hips up into her until she moans his name again. But sometimes they like to get up, use the toilet, take a drink of water. If the Heat isn’t all-consuming, there’s usually time between rounds for that much, at least.

“Mm,” Robin hums against his neck. “I could happily never get up again.” She pauses for a moment, then in a voice almost nervous, says, “again, please.”

“Oh, _milaya,_ ” Cormoran says, hands digging into the soft flesh of her hips, “I will go again any time you want.”

Robin buries her face into his neck, inhaling deeply. “Then again, please,” she says, her lips wet against his skin. “Because I want.”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

He moves beneath her and Robin can feel herself melting once more, turning into a puddle of goo and hormones and sweet surrender. She had thought it would be frightening, to give herself over to her basest instincts, to a strange man in a strange room; but this is easy, she thinks, as the sound of their joining fills the room, wet and visceral and perfect. It is the easiest thing in the world to let Cormoran fuck her, exactly as she has just asked him to.

He smells nothing like any other Alpha she has ever met; well of course he _does,_ but there are so many levels separating him from all the rest that it seems as though he’s an entirely different species from them altogether. His scent is spicy and rich and somehow sweet, not sickly-sweet but smoky-sweet, and she wants to bask in it, bathe in it. 

She turns her head to lick his scent gland, letting the flavour of his emotions wash over her tongue, and he shudders beneath her. 

“Fuck,” he mutters into her shoulder, his fingers tightening on her just the slightest bit more. 

“Good?” she asks him, wanting to do it again. He tastes like— desire, and contentment, and— something deeper than lust. It makes her brave, the taste of his emotions, the feel of him thick and hard inside her.

“So good,” he grunts, thrusting again, harder. “So good for me, _milaya._ ”

She licks him again, a broad flat sweep of her tongue across his scent gland and up his neck, and he groans, and Robin can feel the rush of pleasure bouncing from him to her and back again, growing like a tidal wave.

“Fuck,” he says again, then, “Robin.”

“Yes,” she pants against him, feeling the swell of her orgasm approaching, inevitable as the tide. 

“Robin,” he says again, “Robin, Robin.”

And she realizes that he is not asking her anything, he is just saying her name, over and over, and she clutches her hand up into his hair and returns the favor.

“Yes, Cormoran,” she says, “yes, yes, please, Cormoran, please—”

And his hips snap upward again, suddenly quick, and Robin knows what this means and allows her other hand to snake down between them to rub at her clit and send her flying. 

“Oh,” she is saying mindlessly, “yes, yes, Cormoran—”

And he is following her, his knot swelling again inside her, and though it is large she is already accustomed to it, wants it, _craves_ it as it fills her perfectly.

“Robin,” he says again into her hair, his hands relaxing finally. 

“Yes?” she asks, not lifting her head as her orgasm ripples through her, his twitching cock inside her only magnifying it. 

“Fuck,” he replies, and she smiles against his skin.

“I agree,” she says.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

He snorts half a laugh at Robin’s reply, her just-slightly-dry tone. “You’re perfect,” he murmurs in his rough smoker’s voice. “Fuck.”

He moves his hands from her hips to rest on her back, fingers just barely brushing against her lovely round ass. _She’s well-endowed, his Robin,_ he thinks, barely noticing that he has already begun to claim her in his own head. 

He enjoys her body, the generous hips, the curve of her waist, the swell and dip of her against him. He has always liked round women, though he has been with women with many different types of bodies, tall and short, curvy and flat. Charlotte had been—

But he cannot even picture Charlotte as Robin shifts and settles against him, noses his neck and licks his scent gland again, soft and small like a kitten. She sighs, relaxed and satiated, and it is as if his whole world has contracted to encompass just this bed.

One of Robin’s hands is still tangled in his hair, and she flexes her fingers, scratching his scalp gently. He cannot stop the rumble of contentment the tiny sparks of pleasure-pain melding with his own slowly-dying orgasm, and she laughs. 

“What?” he asks, turning his chin to encourage Robin’s ministrations. She takes his cue and continues petting him. 

“You’re like a cat,” she says, voice warm and amused. “Like a big old alley-cat. Or maybe a dog.”

“If I had a tail, I’m sure I’d be wagging it right now,” he says to make her laugh again, and she does. 

“My family’s dog will thump his leg if you hit the right spot,” she tells him as she continues scratching away. “And if you get it just right, he’ll lean so far over that he’ll just tip right over onto the ground.”

Cormoran snorts, tilting his head into her hand, exposing his neck to her fully. She leans forward to drag her tongue up the tender skin, and his breath catches in his throat. 

“Mm,” she hums against him, lips lightly touching the corner of his jaw. “You taste good.”

“Uh-huh?” he manages, an interrogative noise because words are not forthcoming. 

“Mm,” she hums again. “Salty, and… I don’t know, good. Like an Alpha.”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin doesn’t know what Alphas are supposed to taste like, but she thinks that Cormoran must be it. Sweat-salty, but rich, a little rusty, and entirely addictive.

“I can taste the cigarette smoke,” she whispers. “But it’s not bad. And…” She trails off, trying to quantify the flavors on her tongue. Cormoran groans and turns his head, capturing her lips with his in a kiss that slides past every other descriptor directly into “explicit.”

It’s messy and passionate, all tongue and teeth and touch. Cormoran’s hand comes up to grip Robin’s head, angling her how he likes so that he can do exactly as he pleases, which is perfectly fine with Robin. She meets him and matches him, and quickly they are gasping into each other’s mouths. 

Cormoran’s knot is firm and hard within her, her orgasm still echoing inside, and it should be a lull of relaxation between rounds of passion, but the kiss stretches on, and on, and on—

“I need,” Robin gasps after who-knows-how-long, “to breathe.”

Cormoran leans back, his eyes bright and fixed on her, his chest heaving as much as her own. “Not a bad idea,” he replies. The hand on her head comes around to gently wipe her face, drying her lower lip, and they are quiet, just looking at each other. Just looking.

Robin tilts her face into Cormoran’s hand, and he watches her like a man who has just had cataracts removed— as though he has forgotten what the world looked like without a layer of clouds, as though he is seeing everything again for the first time. 

She doesn’t know what to say, and so she settles into the silence, letting him watch her and simply watching him back. His knot within her is an anchor, tying them together, and Robin would not part from Cormoran in this moment if she were offered the whole world for the taking.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

If he’d been asked, Cormoran would have said that what he likes best about Ruts is absolutely nothing. He has always hated the lack of control, the way his brain goes off sideways into another space entirely, the need to find a suitable partner to ride out the whole sordid affair with. It’s never been anything but a nuisance.

But here, in this moment, absorbing Robin’s pink cheeks and storm-grey eyes, the way her hair plasters against her sweaty body, he is grateful to be in Rut, because it is the reason he has met this woman, has had the chance to touch and be touched by her. And what a gift he has been given.

Robin blinks at him, slow and contemplative.

“I have a question,” she says.

“Anything,” he replies. 

“You keep calling me _milaya._ ”

Cormoran thinks that he should be surprised, but isn’t. “That’s not a question,” he says. 

Robin’s mouth quirks, half a smile lurking at her lips. “Shall I rephrase? Cormoran, what does _milaya_ mean?”

He settles a bit beneath her, his thumbs coming up to stroke the skin of her side. “It’s Russian,” he says. “It’s an endearment. You asked me not to call you… by your designation, so.” He shrugs.

She nods. “Thank you,” she says. “I appreciate you... respecting that.” She blinks twice and looks away, and he can see her muscles flex and tense. 

Cormoran does not say what he is thinking, which is that he would have done anything she had asked in that moment or in any of the following moments, up to and including this one. 

“I guess I chose _milaya_ because of my book,” he says when she does not go on. She clearly does not want to talk about whatever caused her to make her request of him, and he’s good at maneuvering through conversations when he cares to be. 

“Oh, yes, your Russian stories,” Robin says, “are they as good as you remember?”

Cormoran nods. “Better, even, now that I don’t have to take notes on conjugations and tenses,” he replies, hoping to coax that half-smile back out. “I can just enjoy the prose, even if it’s slow going.”

“How long has it been?” she asks, and she is perking back up, coming back from whatever place in her head caused her unhappiness. “Since you took Russian, I mean.”

“Longer than I would ever care to admit,” he replies, and enjoys the way she scrunches her nose at him. 

“I’ve seen your ID,” she informs him. “I already know how old you are.”

Cormoran hums an agreement, becoming aware of his knot starting to go down once more. He’s not accustomed to the rounds being this quick, this close together, but he cannot complain. Not when it means he gets to keep doing all the things he wants to this woman.

He leans forward, placing a kiss on her delicate collarbone. Above him, Robin sighs, her hair falling forward around him as she leans toward him. 

“Thank god you didn’t run screaming at my age,” he says as he lays another open-mouthed kiss on her neck. “Or my face.” Another kiss. “Or my leg.” Another. 

Above him Robin sighs, her hands coming off his shoulders to lace once more into his hair. “I’m not a fool,” she says, slick gathering between her legs again as Cormoran winds her back up. “And besides, it’s a good— good face.”

Cormoran claims a silent mental victory as Robin loses track of her train of thought. “It’s fine,” he says, flexing his hips upward, not enough to be called a thrust but enough to remind Robin about his cock. She shudders.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Beneath her, Cormoran is moving, kissing and stroking and doing things that make Robin feel as though she is going to shiver out of her skin.

“It’s perfect,” she replies as Cormoran shifts his hips again, his cock a throbbing reminder within her of how good she is going to feel, very shortly. “Your face—”

Cormoran smiles against her neck, where he has been carefully leaving his mark. 

“You’re very kind,” he says, and she cannot focus on anything but the way his voice is rich and warm and rough against her. “But we’ve already agreed we won’t trade in kind lies.” He punctuates his sentence with a little nip to her shoulder that has Robin rolling against him, seeking friction.

“How dare you—” she begins, but Cormoran is wrapping his arms around her waist to roll them over, and she is unable to focus on her indignation as he suddenly looms above her, and there is only a moment’s flash of unease before his mouth on back on hers and his scent is everywhere and he is moving quick and hard within her and—

Robin cannot think of anything at all, anything but the way Cormoran is fucking her. She tilts her chin upward to find him staring at her again, with that dark fixed gaze, and she only looks back, unselfconscious, letting him see the way she is blurring about the edges as it all sweeps over her once more.

“Please,” her mouth is saying, “Cormoran, please—”

“Shh, _milaya_ ,” he says to her, hips never losing their inevitable rhythm. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, Robin, I’ve got you—”

And Robin is lost, again, in the haze of pheromones and pleasure and Cormoran, Cormoran, Cormoran. His hands, his mouth, his cock, his eyes— he is the only thing in the world she can think about, can see. The only thing that matters.

She digs her nails into his scalp as he winds her up, higher and higher, and his name is on her lips when she snaps and falls. Cormoran’s knot, swelling within her, is the only thing keeping from floating away.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin is panting beneath him, and Cormoran cannot look away as he chases his own orgasm, as his knot grows and he cums and cums, the sensations wild and endless. He thinks he must have been speaking to her, because his voice is hoarse, but the only thing he can think of is the way she looks up at him, her grey eyes trusting and true.

His name on her lips is the sweetest thing, and Cormoran kisses it from her, over and over, as her body quivers with the pleasure he has given her. 

They lay there, aftershocks rolling through them, echoing back and forth, and the only sound is their heaving breaths, the sticky slide of skin. 

After a moment, one of Robin’s hands loosens from its deathgrip to his hair, and slips down to his cheek. Cormoran lifts his head up from Robin’s shoulder to look at her, as she smooths her fingers against his cheek. 

“Your face,” she says, breaths uneven. “It’s a good face.”

He turns to kiss her palm. “I think I might have blinded you with pleasure,” he says, “which I suppose is a mark in my favor.”

She narrows her eyes at him, pokes him in the cheek. “You’re terrible at taking a compliment,” she says in reply. “And I’ll have you know I have the best vision in my family.”

“I’m sorry to hear about their affliction,” Cormoran says, mock-solemn. “It must be terrible to be the only one with who can see. Are all your dogs guide dogs, or—”

She tries to frown at him and only manages a breathy giggle. “You’re terrible,” she says again. “Why would I possibly lie about this.”

Cormoran thrusts his hips just slightly, just enough to jostle his knot that centimeter deeper. Robin gasps shallowly. 

“You don’t need to flatter me,” he tells her. “You’ve already got me entirely at your service.”

She hums a little, tugging him down to lay his head on the flat warm curve above her breast. “I’m not trying to flatter you,” she says, stroking the ends of his curls where they overhang his face. “I’m just telling you that I like your face.”

Cormoran kisses her collarbone. “I concede defeat. You may think whatever you like of my poor old face.”

“Thank you,” Robin says, placated.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran had not expected Robin to put up such a fuss about his inability to take her compliment, and he’d never admit it aloud, but he was rather pleased. It was nice, to have such a beautiful woman insist that she liked his face.

He knows how he looks, and harbours no secret delusions that he is handsome; he might have been, in another life, but his nose has been broken and he’s got scars and he generally looks like life has beaten him soundly about the face— which of course it has. He’s not handsome; interesting, surely, and he’s willing to accept striking, if one can get past the pun. 

But Robin is so insistent that he has a good face. And he can accept that she thinks that. 

Laying with his face against her shoulder, he is surrounded by Robin’s scent, and he has never been so relaxed. He can smell how happy she is, how peaceful and sated, such a perfect blend of orgasm-rich Omega that he thinks he could bottle it and sell it as an aphrodisiac. 

“Christ,” Cormoran says aloud. “It’s only been a few hours, hasn’t it?”

Robin makes a sound of agreement. “I think so,” she says. “The sun’s changed positions, but it hasn’t gone down yet.” She stretches, and Cormoran enjoys the slide of her skin against his. “It feels like it’s been forever, already.”

“Does it?” Cormoran asks. 

She sighs. “Not in a bad way. More like… I can’t recall a time I haven’t known you. And I know we met this afternoon. But it feels like I’ve known you forever. Like I’ve always wanted you.”

Cormoran, still firmly knotted and ensconced in Robin’s body, is awash with a sort of warm possessiveness that is nothing like he’s even known. He knows exactly what she means. It’s terrifying.

“You’ve got me, _milaya_ ,” he tells her, nuzzling against her shoulder.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin thinks she ought to be more concerned by how easy it has been, having her Heat with Cormoran. She ought to be panicking more, or something. But Cormoran feels safe, comforting. Her Alpha will take good care of her. She can’t summon the worry that she thinks she ought to feel.

The weight of Cormoran atop her isn’t negligible, but it’s comforting as well, like a weighted blanket might feel, she thinks. But no weighted blanket in the world could smell like Cormoran, could say her name like Cormoran, could fuck her until she’s a moaning mess like Cormoran. 

Robin sighs again, a deep heave of breath. With a knot inside her and an Alpha across her, she is utterly tranquil, every ancient part of her brain at peace. The air is saturated with the smell of sex, of Heat, their scents combining into something greater than the sum of its parts. 

“Don’t be cross if I fall asleep,” Robin murmurs, “only I don’t think I’ve ever been so comfortable in my life.”

Cormoran huffs a laugh against her skin, and Robin smiles, her eyes closed. “Might as well get some rest while you can,” he mumbles. “I have plans for you later.”

“Mm,” Robin says. “I think I like the sound of that.”

He kisses her shoulder again and heaves a sigh of his own. “I should hope so.”

Robin tugs her fingers through his hair, enjoying the way the curls spring and snarl. “You sleep too,” she says. 

“Alright,” Cormoran replies. “Whatever you say, _milaya._ ”

And to her own surprise, Robin finds herself slipping into sleep.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran hadn’t expected to actually fall asleep, but he had been so very comfortable, every need taken care of, and Robin had told him to take a nap with her— and so he had.

When he awakens, the sun has gone down, so it must be several hours later. He is well-rested, his body refreshed— he finds that his knot has gone down entirely, which it hasn’t done since perhaps the moment he caught Robin’s scent at the cafe. He rolls off of her and slips away, breaking their skin-to-skin contact for the first time in hours. 

Robin mumbles something unintelligible and comes awake, hands already reaching for him. There’s a furrow in her brow that Cormoran wants to smooth away. 

“Where’d you go?” she asks, voice soft with sleep, and Cormoran reaches back to take her hand. 

“Just stretching,” he replies, making good on his statement by rolling his shoulders and cracking his back in a very satisfying fashion.

“Don’t leave,” she says plaintively. When he looks over at her, Cormoran is caught once more by her eyes; she looks worried, as though there is a single chance that he might, in fact, leave this bed and this woman for anything less than an act of god. 

He props himself up on one hand and leans over to kiss Robin’s pout away. “Never,” he says, lost in this moment, this woman. “Don’t worry, _milaya,_ I’m not going anywhere.”

Robin’s hands come up to pull him closer, and Cormoran goes willingly. He can smell how ready she is, and his body was made to meet her needs.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin goes from unconscious to ready-to-fuck between heartbeats; her body, previously sated, craves an Alpha’s touch, an Alpha’s knot. And Cormoran is there immediately, his touch and his tongue, and Robin loses herself in it, the easy surrender.

Cormoran is licking his way down her neck, and Robin tugs at him, urging him to return to the cradle of her hips once more, so she can have him inside her, where he belongs. 

“Please,” she says, “please, I need you— please, Cormoran—”

And he moves and lifts her so they can meet in the middle, and Robin tilts her hips and pulls him close until the blunt head of his cock slips between her dripping folds, and she is needy, and he is there. He thrusts smoothly and he is moving inside her once more, his cock the perfect stretch and slide, and Robin is lost to it. 

“Yes,” she is saying, mindlessly, just a way to urge him on, “yes, please, like that, Cormoran, please—”

Robin, through the Heat and the rolling waves of her imminent orgasm, can tell that he likes it when she says his name, can see it in the flex of his muscles, the way he clutches her hips. It makes her want to say it again—

“Cormoran,” she breathes, she moans. “Cormoran, yes—”

And he surges above her, chest heaving, and Robin is being fucked like she never imagined she could be, until she is reduced to nothing but pleasure. She can feel his knot, beginning to swell and catch inside her, and she chases it.

Cormoran is talking to her, and she does not want him to stop.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

“Fuck,” he says, a droplet of sweat already dripping down his neck. “Fuck, fuck— good girl, yes, like that, so good for me, jesus fuck—”

He knows he is going to cum soon, because that’s what Heat and Rut are for, but he wants to give Robin more than this— wants to give her everything— 

“Yes,” she is saying beneath him, “yes yes yes—”

It’s as though she was made for him, specifically, just him. The way she meets him, the way she matches him. 

“Cormoran,” Robin says, “please—”

“Cum for me, _milaya,_ ” he says between gasping breaths. “Cum for me, sweet girl—”

And she slides a hand down to when their bodies meet and he can feel it, when she lets go, and he follows her down, letting the orgasm build and engulf him, until he can only pant her name. 

When he collapses down atop her once more, his cock still hard, his knot swollen and snug within her perfect cunt, Cormoran thinks that this must be what heaven is like. This feeling of absolute peace. Total belonging. 

This is supposedly to be a casual thing. That’s what her profile said: _casual only._ The idea of never seeing Robin again after her Heat ends is— devastating.

But he will do anything for her, this woman who is tracing the shape of the scar on his lip. He will do anything for her, including let her go. 

But he has until that time ends to give her everything she deserves, every ounce of satisfaction and care he has within him to offer, and he will not waste it.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

The waves of orgasm rolling through her, Robin lays beneath Cormoran once more and lets his weight sooth all the tension from her body. She’s been stressed, and harried, and worried, but she cannot even begin to think about the things that made her unhappy when Cormoran’s knot is filling her up so perfectly.

Before today, she didn’t know what it was, to be with an Alpha. She doesn’t think she can ever go back. 

“That was fast,” she says aloud, unthinking. 

“Sorry,” Cormoran says, and Robin shakes her head. 

“No, not what I meant— sorry, I meant that I was just asleep, wasn’t I? And then— whew.”

She can feel Cormoran smile against her, where he has laid his head once more at her shoulder. She likes having him there.

“It happens that way, sometimes. If we stop for a little bit, like to sleep or eat something, it goes quickly the next round, because your body wants to lock mine down again.”

Robin snorts, unladylike. “Lock your body down?”

Cormoran laughs. “Not my turn of phrase.”

She settles into the pillows, which are uncomfortably warm but smell delightfully of the both of them. “Not that I’m upset, you understand. It was…” she trails off a little, the echoes of pleasure still shivering inside her.

“Good?” he asks, voice a rumble. Robin smiles, nods.

“Yeah,” she replies. “Good.”

Cormoran rubs his chin against her shoulder, lost in thought. “Let me know if I’m too heavy,” he says. “I don’t want to crush you.”

“Not at all,” Robin says. “Actually, I rather like laying like this. I feel very… secure.”

“Good,” Cormoran replies, turning to kiss her shoulder. “But let me know anyway.”

She adjusts her hips, enjoying the press of his cock still inside her. “I will,” she says. “Maybe next time I can be on top again.”

He makes a noise of agreement, low in his chest. It makes Robin grin. 

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Mm,” Cormoran agrees. “Yeah.”

She doesn’t say that it’s as much for her own pleasure— which, of course, it will be— but also to give his leg a break, because she’s noticed how hard he has to work to be on top, with only one leg to brace with.

She doesn’t know what else to say, so she lets the silence grow, lets their breath and scent fill the room. 

“Tell me something,” Cormoran says eventually, his voice raspy and relaxed.

“Like what?” Robin asks.

“Anything,” he says. “Like— you have a dog. What’s he like?”

Robin smiles; she is like anyone else, and happy to talk about her pets. “His name is Rowntree, and he’s ancient,” she says. “He mostly just naps, these days. But he was my very best friend when I desperately needed one.”

Cormoran is absently stroking the thin skin across her collarbone, and she enjoys the touch. She runs her fingers across his shoulders, returning the caress. 

“He sounds like a good boy,” Cormoran says. 

Robin traces a heart on his shoulder with her fingernail. “The very best of boys,” she agrees. “I think everyone ought to have one, at some point. A pet, I mean, a dog or a car or even a fish or something. It’s a good way to learn how to care for other creatures, who rely on you.”

“I never had a pet, not properly,” Cormoran replies. “But I can see what you mean. Lots of people never learn how to care about anyone or anything but themselves, and I’d like to knock some sense into them. It’s people like that who do the most harm, and they never even seem to see it.”

“It’s perfectly tragic,” Robin says, and is filled with an odd sort of glow, a fondness and a satisfaction that she doesn’t think a different man could have given her. Cormoran is a man who has come out of his experiences both harder and kinder, and she rather likes it. 

“I’m very glad I picked you,” she says. “I can’t imagine it being this good with anyone else.”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

There’s a moment in which Cormoran forgets to breathe; the idea of Robin, _his_ Robin, laying like this beneath someone else, some other Alpha, is enough to make his heart stop. But he remembers to live a second later.

“It wouldn’t have been,” he says instead, infusing it with a hint of cockiness, enough to play it like a joke. “There’s only one Cormoran Strike.”

He winks at her, to make her smile, and she does. 

“Aren’t I the lucky one, then,” she replies, “to have the good taste to end up with the one and only Cormoran Strike.”

He has to know— “how did you pick me?” he asks. “You must have gotten plenty of messages.”

She scoffs, and it makes his heart swell a little. “God, did I ever. So many messages, and most of them utterly disgusting. Yours was one of the few I got that both had decent spelling and didn’t involve a photograph of your genitals.”

“Really?” he asks. He knows he shouldn’t probe, but he’s never been one to back down from a question he wanted the answers to, even when he knows the answer may not be what he wants to hear. 

“Really,” she confirms. “It was horrible.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, stroking one hand along the soft skin of her ribs, down to the dip of her waist. “You’d think their mums would have taught them better manners.”

“You have lovely manners,” she says, her voice shaking just a little as his hand curves around to grasp the fullness of her ass. “You’ll have to convey my appreciation to your mum.”

Cormoran does not want to ruin the moment by telling her that his mum’s long gone, but neither does he want to lie to her. He chooses instead to distract her, lifting his head just far enough to capture the closest nipple. She gasps, her hands coming up to clutch his shoulders, and Cormoran loses himself in Robin’s body, learning new ways to make her moan his name.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

His knot isn’t going down, but Cormoran seems intent on bringing Robin to another orgasm without the use of his cock at all; he is stroking and pinching and tasting whatever parts of her he can reach, and it’s working.

Robin gives herself over to him, letting him do anything that feels good. And as it turns out, nearly everything feels good. She wonders, laying there beneath him, if it’s what he’s doing or just who he is.

She’s never reacted to an Alpha this way before; she’s never reacted to _anyone_ this way before. It’s as though all it takes is his mouth on her, the rich spice of his scent in the air, to send her body into overdrive. 

He bites down softly on her collarbone as he gently pinches her nipple, and Robin cannot think of anything at all.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Cormoran is determined to find all the places that makes Robin gasp and moan, and sets himself to it with the sort of single-mindedness that made him a good investigator. The side of her neck, just behind her ear; the tender crease where her leg meets her cunt; the underside of her breast. Each one elicits noises which he stores in his memory to take out at a later date, like a dragon with its hoard of treasures.

“Stop,” she finally cries out, “please— it’s too much! I need— a break, please.”

Cormoran subsides, leaving his hands where they are on her lovely body, and he cannot help the satisfaction that crosses his face.

“Too much, _milaya?_ ” he asks, looking down at her flushed cheeks and hazy eyes.

“Don’t be— smug,” she says between breaths. “It’s— not a good— look.”

“I don’t know,” he says, dipping his face down to kiss her cheek before settling his head down next to hers, his beard tickling her ear. “You said you liked my face.”

She swats his arm and sighs, and he can feel in the way her cunt is quivering that she will need him again soon. His knot seems to have no plans to go down, but he will react to what she needs, as their biology dictates. He’s not upset about it. 

“I do like your face,” Robin says eventually, her breathing coming back under control. “But there’s no need to be smug about it.”

She turns her have to look at him, and they are so close together that he thinks he might be able to count the flecks of blue in her eyes. She tilts forward to kiss him, lingering and sweet. He parts his lips, tongue seeking entrance, and she grants it, sighing as he licks into her mouth. 

He could just kiss her forever, he thinks, but his body has other plans, and he can feel the way her hips begin to rock against his, can smell the slick she is making to ease him deeper inside her. 

She makes an urgent noise into his mouth, and Cormoran moves his hands to her hips, pulls her towards him.

“You wanted to be on top, didn’t you?” he asks into the millimeter of air between them, and she nods, her hair falling forward like a curtain around their faces. “Come on then, _milaya,_ take what you need.”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

Robin is astride him, his knot still present but gone down enough for her to move up and down, the slide of his cock delicious inside of her. She curls her hips and sighs, does it again, faster.

Beneath her, Cormoran is staring at her face, and she feels like the center of the universe; she braces her hands on his chest, tracing her fingers through his chest hair as she fucks herself gently on his cock, slowly gaining speed.

“Good girl,” he says, quiet, urging. “Come on, sweet girl, beautiful girl—”

Robin throws her head back, content with the pace she is setting, not too fast but enough that she is bouncing, breasts swaying, little shocks of pleasure bursting through her as the slight swell of his knot catches, keeping her from slipping all the way off. Up, then down again, bringing him deeper and deeper inside, until she is seated so fully on his cock that she thinks they might have become one person. 

Cormoran’s fingers are digging into the flesh of her hips, tight enough that she thinks he might leave bruises; _good,_ she thinks, let him mark her, let her keep that part of him, of this. 

“ _Milaya,_ if you don’t move, I’m going to die,” Cormoran says, his voice tight in his throat, and Robin shifts forward, then back, keeping him buried deeply in her pussy so that she can savor the stretch of him. 

She doesn’t say anything, just keeps moving her hips, forward and back, riding him, drawing out the pleasure. She watches Cormoran bite his lip and enjoys the way his hips are moving with hers, trying to move her harder, faster.

“Robin,” Cormoran says, then, “ _Robin_ ,” and she leans forward again, pressing her lips to his cheek.

“Cormoran,” she whispers, enjoying the changed angle but ready to cum now. “Will you fuck me?”

“ _Yes,_ ” he groans, and his hips come up hard against hers, and she simply lets him fuck up into her, her orgasm growing and bursting like a firework, sparking and bright as the sun. Her body is limp against his as he drives up into her until his knot is hard and firm inside of the stretch of her cunt once more.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ •• 

They lay there in the afterglow for minutes that stretch out, golden and sweet like honey. Cormoran doesn’t bother to keep track of the time, content to let Robin curl against him, feel the way she twitches and tenses through her extended orgasm, gently pressing up into her to draw it out as long as he can.

Robin drifts off, after a bit, her breath going slow and even, not really asleep but resting in the half-way state that Omegas have when they’re knotted. It’s a mark of how safe she feels, how secure, that her body and mind relax enough to leave him entirely in charge. He strokes his fingers through her hair, enjoying the way she is still straddling him, the way her arm has curled around his shoulder as if to anchor her against him. He simply closes his eyes, letting the ease of the moment soak into his skin. 

After a while, he can feel the way his knot is starting to go down, responding to some signal from Robin’s body that it will be time to go again soon. She comes awake, but stays relaxed, not moving from her place atop him. He presses a kiss to her hair, and she sighs. 

He is entranced by the sweep of her dusty lashes against her cheek; she is tracing meaningless shapes through the thick hair on his pectorals.

“Tell _me_ something, this time,” she says, soft and low. “Tell me something that no one else knows.”

Cormoran does not know what to say to her, this creature he was never expecting. This is nothing like he has had before, and he wants to tell her— wants to give her— all of himself, everything he has, everything he is. 

_You’ve known her for less than a day,_ his rational mind is saying, but he ignores it. His mind wanders, offers him only bits of Robin— her dog, that she went to uni, her Heat-app username— 

“My middle name is Blue,” he says, not exactly a secret but close enough, he thinks. She lifts her head, blinks at him with those stunning eyes. 

“Blue?” Robin asks, surprised, perhaps a bit delighted. She smiles, and he loves her smile, wants to memorize it so he might take it out on rainy days to examine again and again.

“Yeah,” he says, shrugging his shoulders slightly so as not to jostle her. “My mum— she had a thing for the Blue Oyster Cult. Had a tattoo of some of their lyrics, actually.”

“I suppose you should be grateful she didn’t saddle you with Oyster,” Robin says, still smiling. “Did anyone ever call you Blue? It seems like a sweet nickname, really. Better than Venetia.”

A pang, a lance of pain— he should have told her something else, anything else.

“Yeah,” he says curtly. “Once.”

She picks up on his abrupt shift of mood, and sighs, leaning down to nuzzle against him as if in apology.

“So it’s not a secret,” she says, letting the conversation move along, flowing around the stone in the stream.

“You’re right,” he says, reaching up to run his fingers through her hair again. She’s a bit heavy to be laying fully atop him the way she is, but he doesn’t care. His cock twitches, starting to soften where it is nestled inside her; he thinks it won’t be too much longer before they begin again.

She presses her lips to his skin. “It’s alright,” Robin says, closing her eyes again. “I understand.”

He wants to give her something, something of him, some part of him that will only be hers. That is what she’s asking for, he realizes; she wants to own some small piece of him, and he finds he wants her to have it. He wants to make her smile again, too.

“My favorite Spice Girl was Sporty Spice,” he says, pulling this from his memory entirely at random, and she does laugh at that, a full-throated laugh that sends a shiver through him. She pulls back, looks up at him with eyes bright, and he knows he’s managed to say the right thing.

“Sporty? Why?”

“She seemed like she would be the best to hang out with. And I was impressed by the back handspring.”

Robin smiles at him. “I told everyone I liked Baby best, but secretly I thought Scary Spice was the coolest,” she says, and this is a secret she is giving back to him. 

“Why?” he asks in return.

“She was so cool,” Robin says. “She wasn’t afraid of anything. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She was tough and loud and fearless. She wasn’t afraid to be too much, you know? I wanted to be like that.”

 _You are,_ Cormoran wants to say, but he can’t know that, he barely knows her. 

“I think,” he says instead, letting his hand ghost along her neck, pressing against the scent gland there and making her sigh. “I think you can be absolutely anything you want to be.”

Robin’s relaxing into him, and he can feel her cunt fluttering around him, preparing for the next round. She looks up at him, eyes heavy-lidded, and licks her lips. 

“Girl power,” she says, and he laughs, and she’s smiling, and it’s never been like this before, he thinks for what must be the hundredth time as he gives a little thrust of his hips just to make her gasp. It’s never been like this at all.


End file.
